Overheating laptop graphics card or cpu?

Apr 27, 2009

- I think the fan is operating freely as I can feel the warm air being blown out. But I never turned the laptop on with the lid off so not 100% but 95% sure its working fine. yeah I vacumed everywhere and especially around the fan and circuitory (careful not to touch but got pretty close). I am getting more certain that is overheating as I have used it for about an hour and it froze. I left it for about 1 and half to "cool down" and then tried it again and it worked but this time for a shorter period.  I have ordered a couple of laptop cooling pads, 1 Belkin one and 1 4 fan ebay job and am hoping they do the trick but am not holding my breathe.  I want to get some sort of software fan speed controller or maybe some bios update (but am not sure about what make exactly my laptop is so dont want ot risk it).