Overheating laptop

My daughter's laptop has been running very hot lately, and it seems to be more than a "get a laptop cooler" problem. I installed the NVIDIA System Monitor software, and her GPU (a NVIDIA 9600 M GT) runs at around 85 C at idle and 95-100 C in CoH just standing around in Icon.

I can hear the fan running constantly, but it doesn't seem to do anything to cool it. If this were my desktop, I'd open it up and see what's going on, but I'm not sure how much I could/should take apart on a laptop.

Any suggestions on what I can do to find out what is causing the overheating, and what I can do it correct the problem? The high temps don't seem to have caused any damage yet, but I'm worried they will if it goes on much longer.

TIA!

Generally, you can take apart a laptop. It's a lot trickier than taking apart a desktop, but it can be done. Don't do it without step by step instructions, though, or you do have a pretty good chance of breaking something. What I'd do is look around on the internet and see if anyone is talking about taking apart whichever specific laptop it is. If it can be done, there are almost certainly instructions somewhere on how to do it.

It does sound to me like a dust/etc issue, if you can still hear the fans and it didn't run like this before. My dad took apart my mom's laptop a few months back and took a pad of dust a half-inch thick off the heat sink, and it solved the problems she'd been having with it. The other possibility is a problem with the heat sink, specifically the heat sink's thermal connection to whatever it's connected to. If there isn't any dust, you may want to investigate if it's possible to remove the heatsink and reapply the thermal paste on whatever chips are underneath.

As Muon said, it sounds like dust buildup is the problem.

Before you take it apart, try just blasting the fan ports with some compressed air to see if you can break up the buildup a bit.

Short bursts. If you try to long-burst it, you could damage the internals.

Also try small blasts between the spaces on the keyboard as well.

Try inverting the machine and doing it again.

Oh, and the machine should be OFF when you're doing this of course...

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Many thanks to both of you! I think I'll try a combination of your suggestions; first using compressed air to try to clean out the fans, and then possibly opening up the drive/Ram door on the back of the computer to see if that's enlightening. I'm a little leary of exploring much more than that; after all, I'm trying to extend the laptop's usable life by reducing the temps, so hastening its demise by taking it apart is an irony I'm certain my daughter will not find amusing.

And Hyper, power off, got it!

Just to update, the compressed air did the trick! What was weird was that there was almost no visible dust in the vents, and I saw very little dust come out after the first puff. But when we rebooted, it went from 80 C at idle with the fan constantly running, to 40 C at idle and 50 C under load. *Huge* difference!

So I guess the moral of the story is just because you can't *see* the dust doesn't mean it isn't there causing a problem.

Thanks again!