Lappy Help
 

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

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

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

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...