how do I turn my laptop cooling fan on at full blast
the core is running at around 150F
the fan is nice and quite
BUT
wouldn't mind the noise if it meant the computer would keep working instead of burning up

Laptop details would help.

With some BIOS it is possible to set the fan to run permanently.

Depending on your laptop model and Linux distro there are:

lm sensors, fancontrol and thinkfan.

Look here:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/22108...trol-fan-speed

2 members found this post helpful.

Many if not most laptops run way too hot. What to do depends a great deal on your expertise and daring. If you have little of either the best you can do is play with bios settings and either turn off some power saving settings or set to a lower target temp.

Many problems can be physical and require taking it apart. It is extremely common that manufacturers have two design imperatives that create thermal problems. One, they wish to make them small and especially, thin and pretty which reduces air flow in many ways not the least of which is very limited air vent size. With decent tools and a little work and imagination it is often possible and almost always desirable to increase the size and/or number of vents and do what you can to keep it pretty. Two, is they wish to make them easy to assemble so they often desifn with very high tolerances in fit between the CPU and HeatSink and almost always choose either way too thick thermal paste or those stupid double-sided adhesive foam patches that are merely impregnated with thermal paste.

There are good tutorial videos on youtube that can help sometimes even with your specific model. I have bought copper shims to place between heatsink and cpu and spread a proper, thin film of paste on either side to great advantage on more than one laptop. This is especially effective when the gap between them is great. It is not uncommon for this alone to cause a 20C drop in temps. It's much harder to find a larger capacity fan that will fit without much hacking but it sometimes can be done. It is possible on any fan to disconnect the rpm sensor wire causing full time full output. It is important to do that as a test first with putting it back if it doesn't work in a manner that you like.

The all too common accumulated cruft cleaning is the most basic and common problem since constant airflow deposits plenty of "dust babies" in the fan and vents. Anything you can imagine to increase airflow and reduce temps is good since 150 F is WAY too hot. Thats 10F ABOVE the threshold of human pain! and certainly not good for electronic life let alone stability.

Good Luck.

2 members found this post helpful.

it's a HP mini 210-1000 net-book
http://www.pcworld.com/product/40958...-10-black.html

@enorbit
it's looking like some hardware hacking may be in order here
the software solutions all call for there to be a /sys/thermal/pwm (or something )file to input commands to the fan this thing dosen't have one
had it open the fan motor is a 3 coil 3 wire type
the vents have really small holes in them with lots of space
in between them maybe I'll just remove the vent covers to let more air through ugly solution but an ugly working computer is better than a pretty nonworking computer

I've had good luck dressing up expanded and new vents by super gluing some black packing foam (especially that with reasonably large holes) which also helps to filter dust bunnies. However the single most important item is the level and tightness between CPU and HeatSink so be sure to check that out, if possible.

I need to get some heat sink past BEFORE I even think about doing anything with the heat sink
this thing is old enough that the heat sink paste has dried out
I did expand the in and out vent holes it did help now it runs at 130 F
still hotter than I like

Another 20C drop would indeed be nice.

the CPU chip is rated at 100 C RUNNING (boiling water)
but
the HDD would burn to death long before that

I just got a chill pad from a thrift store for $4...

if it is running HOT
The first thing is to do a bit of disassemble ( if possible) and REMOVE DUST

then check the heatsink paste and see if it is sill attached