Comment 67 for bug 751689

I also had this problem repeatingly with different versions of Kubuntu. As it turns out, the reason for this, is not the fan, but rather a problem with the intel graphics driver which is not loaded correctly. On Kubuntu I always notice it when there is a problem to activate "Desktop Effects". Currently I am running Oneric and with Oneric adding "blacklist intel_ips" to the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf did the trick. Unfortunately I do not remember where I exactly found this trick. But it helps. Instead of having a basic 80-90 °C and sometimes more when the overheating appeared my CPU now has between 50-60°C, sometimes more, but overheating has not been a problem since then on my Thinkpad X201. I guess it will be again with the next Precise release, because new release of (K)Ubuntu always break a lot and need months until they are stable again. But for now everything is fine. I have to add that I am also running the Xorg-edgers ppa https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa and a fresh kernel from there. But this alone did not help. Since I have lost the source of my information, I do not know if I forgot something, but I believe that is all.