Laptop shutting off

[The_Wiseman]

My friend has a Dell Inspiron 1501, and it's shutting off randomly on AC power. I had him run speedfan and it reported a Core temp of 65C. Sounds pretty hot to me considering mine runs around 45C, but I'm not really sure. Mine's pretty old, the new processors might run hotter all the time.

Would randomly shutting down be a CPU overheating symptom (it sure sounds like it is to me...)?

He was out of warranty in April, so any ideas on repair would be great. I'm going to check the heatsink when he brings it here, but I don't really think I'll be able to fix it. Might have to check with Dell about out of warranty service.

Some specs I can gather from dxdiag (he's not too tech savvy, so I got what I could)
AMD Turion(tm) 64 Mobile Technology MK-36, ~2.0GHz
512mb ram
ATI Radeon Xpress 1150
SAMSUNG HM060HI ATA Device

[glc]

Open it up and blow the dust out of it. That's definitely an overheating issue.

[The_Wiseman]

Thanks, I will when he brings it to me. I haven't seen it yet so it might just be dusted up. If it turns out to be something else, how hard is checking the heatsink on one of these things?

[glc]

Haven't had one of those open, but I believe the service manual is available at support.dell.com.

You may want to check on a bios update - I've heard of Dell laptops needing one for proper thermostatic control of the fans.