Consistent problem locking up

I have an Inspiron 8500, it was given to me by my father. A couple of months ago it started to lock up on a consistent basis. I was almost sure it was a heat problem, but I have download a program that gives me control of the temperatures by letting me turn on the fans higher to keep it around 100 degrees fahrenheit, not too terrible for a laptop. I've had many many theories as to what could be causing this, but I'm narrowing it down to my video card or my RAM. I am completely stumped on what could be causing this. Everything on my computer is standard, P4, GeForce4 4200go, 512 of ram, the usual. I took a look inside the case and pulled out my video card, nothing out of the ordinary, but I noticed that the video card APPEARS to also serve as a heatsink for the processor? I'm not sure, but that's what it looks like. I've considered putting more compound underneat the video card so it'll give some relief to the processor, but have yet to try it. There are times it'll run for 5 minutes, and times it'll run for 45 minutes, doing nothing unusual. I've reformatted, still the same problem.

Has anyone had/heard of this problem? I'm stumped, the Dell team told me to run diagnostics and nothing turned up. I'm out of ideas, and I'm hoping someone can help. Thanks.

 

Do a reformat, and update all your drivers.

 

It's been done, no luck.

 

Did you press F12 when you booted up at the dell logo and do those tests on there. Here are the directions which you should run all the tests.

Steps to run a Hard drive diagnostics.
1.Turn Off the computer and wait for 10 seconds.
2.Restart the computer and as soon as you see the blue dell logo Press "Ctrl + Alt + D" or Presss F12 key on the keyboard.
3. Then you will see a screen that says "IDE Drive Diagnostics running please wait."
4.After approximately 2 minutes you will get the results of the diagnostics. Look at the line which says IDE Primary Drive zero,
If the result says pass then the hard drive is fine. If the diagnostics say fail, there is a problem

 

1. define "locking up"

2. how was the gunk level inside the computer when you opened it up? give it a good cleaning.

3. run the notebook on only one stick of RAM at a time to see if the problem continues

4. how hot do the components of the notebook get? can you post max temps?

 

Yes, run the heat tests in the directions i gave you. It will turn your fan on full speed and it see if it cools down, and then it shuts off and it tests that.

 

I have ran the diagnostics with no failures. There was no noticeable gunk inside the case, but I ran a can of air through it anyway. When I say it 'locks up' I mean that the mouse freezes, when I press the Windows button nothing comes up, and the only way to get out of it is to hold down the power button for 3-5 seconds. The fans are still running when it freezes. I only have one stick of RAM, so I am unable to try that option. The highest I've seen the notebook get before I was controlling the fans myself was about 136 fahrenheit.

 

hmmm. well, the 'locking up' that you're experiencing sounds like a software issue rather than a hardware or heat issue (since your (CPU?) temp seem to be within normal operating temps). you say that you've already reformatted, but that didn't work.

i would recommend trying to find a friend with a notebook that uses the same RAM and swap to test the RAM. after that, i would say something is wrong with your motherboard.