Lappy Help

[Medieval Bob]

Girlfriend has a Latitude C640. She says if she leaves it on for more than an hour, it'll shut itself down and won't restart for a while.

My first guess is heat. It seems pretty logical. Something overheats. The computer shuts itself down and won't reboot until it's cooled off.

Anyhow, I tried to get into BIOS to watch the CPU temperature for a while, but I couldn't figure out how to pull it up. The boot screen comes on for about 2-3 seconds, and then the XP boot screen comes up. I can't escape out of it. I tried del, backspace, f10, f8... I dunno. Maybe I'm just hitting the wrong buttons.

Anyhow, I downloaded the only temperature monitor I could find from download.com in a pinch, but it only monitors HDD temp. So, her hdd went from ~80F to ~110F in like 10 minutes, but I didn't wait around to see how high it would climb, because I don't really know what temp HDDs are supposed to hit.

So, can anyone tell me

a) Is there a known problem with this model overheating?
b) How do I monitor the CPU temperature?
c) What can I do about cooling? The one small fan on the bottom seems to be working fine, so I don't really know what to do if the problem truly is heat.

kthx

[undeadzombieguy]

I'd suggest getting Sisoft Sandra, which is able to monitor CPU temperatures aswell as loads of other things that might be wrong with the hardware.
http://www.octools.com/files/san2005.SR2a-1060-OTZ.exe

[WetWired]

Try F2.
Be sure that the bottom intake is unobstructed. If you're placing it on something, it should be hard and flat.

[Medieval Bob]

Ya, it's sitting flat on a desk and seems to have okay ventilation. I could put some extra feet on it to give it some elevation...