Right in the middle of posting the rap thread.

[bennyboy]

It sounds to me like your graphics card is overheating.  I don't know much about the cooling features or whether you're just using the built-in graphics that comes on the CPU, but on my desktop computers, cleaning out fans or otherwise improving cooling has sometimes helped.

Make sure your laptop isn't sitting on cloth.  When you're spanking the monkey, put it on a TV tray rather than on your bed.  

Seriously though, a reminder to back up all your important data, because ANY problem like this could potentially lead to a total failure and loss of your data.

Back up again, at least for now, but that is another thing I had not considered, but in all this i could hear the fan so not sure that is the case. Oh and as far as important data, I dont keep that on any computer, I keep it on paper or I write it down, if this thing crashes for good, I got my money's worth from it.  Shit I paid less for it than my first month of cell phone service. I use it all the time and have probably squeezed about 2 years worth of use into one year. It is a used computer.

No I don't put it on my bed when i bank my spunky. It is on a tv tray.

In my experience, when there is dust in the fan, it bunches up on the fan's cover.  The fan can still turn, but the air is not flowing properly.