laptop overheating?

[Gotham Dark Knight]

Originally Posted by arif

I suspect I have an overheating problem, but don't know.
I have a Dell i5000e (since Oct. 2000) laptop. The hard disk is partitioned into a C: and D: drive. C: is smaller with Win2k & software. D: is larger for data. Lately, it has been prone to get a blue error screen. When I reboot with a Win98 boot disk, the BIOS indicates a garbled volume ID for the hard disk. Any files or folders show up with wacky scrambled names. If I wait a few hours or days, the system appears to work fine again. However, at least once after reboot Win2k said that the D: drive was unformatted and I had to re-format it. I was able to boot with the Win98 boot disk and copy some small files from D: onto a floppy before reformatting.

What kind of problem is my system having? The crash seems to occur after doing CPU-intensive work and a few times when I tried to gently move the laptop. Can you recommend system-monitoring software that can warn me when I'm getting close to a crash condition? Is it simply time to get a new laptop? If so, feel free to recommend models that have a 1600x1200 resolution screen like this one.

Are you having any lock-up issues? Any other problems like some files taking longer to execute? If its working fine and it locks up after a while, probably over-heating...if the problem is intermittent it could be something else.