laptop's getting overheated. What should I do about it?

What could cause your laptop to overheat... hmm?

• using it on a soft surface, where the intake is blocked by the material the laptop is sitting on
• using the laptop in an extremely hot and humid environment
• excessive dust and debris between the fan and the heat sink
• a cooling fan that is not spinning
• a cooling assembly that is not mounted properly, or that was damaged during assembly
• overclocking

You don't say anything about overclocking... so we'll skip right past that.  Some people might want to pipe in with "Old Thermal Paste!!" but actually, you could have a 10 year old laptop with dried and crusty paste... and the unit isn't going to overheat if everything else is nominal.

You don't say anything about environmental conditions, so we are going to assume you aren't on an island on the equator, wondering why your laptop keeps overheating every time you use it on the beach.

You don't say anything about where you are using the laptop, so we are going to assume a few things.  We are going to assume you are using it on a flat surface, and that you haven't removed or lost the feet on the bottom of the laptop.

This leaves maintenance.  By and large, the biggest cause of Laptop Overheating is this.

Dust and debris will get sucked up through the fan, and will collect on the leading edge of the heat sink.  It needs to be cleaned periodically.  When it is thin, you can break it up with a can of canned air, by blowing INTO where the hot air normally comes out.  Again... IF YOU ARE DOING THIS REGULARLY... you will only be blowing small amounts off the heat sink, and what remains will get blown out the heat sink when you turn the laptop on.

If you are not cleaning the cooling channel regularly, and it does build up to the point where it is a layer like a piece of felt, and you could peel it off in once piece... then canned air is only likely to separate it from the heat sink, and not really break it up.  If it is broken up, it will only be into large chunks.... and in more than one instance I've seen these large chunks of material ball up in the fan and stop it from spinning.  You read that right.  If you let it go for too long, and you blow a burst of air into the fan, you could actually make the situation WORSE than it was before.

So.  There comes a point when, if the regular maintenance wasn't done, you are going to have to take the laptop apart to repair and clean it properly.

See, you can kill a fan by having it try to force air through an opening it can't force air through.  The fan would continue to try to push air through that wall of debris, but it would only succeed in compressing air against it, creating a back-flow... and increasing the resistance to spinning.  That resistance would slow the fan, and eventually cause it to fail.  Thus, by NOT doing anything at all, you are virtually guaranteeing that eventually the laptop will begin to always overheat.

You said you need to learn how to solve Laptop overheating.  First, you need to learn where a laptop should be used.  On a hard, flat surface.  Second, you need to learn how to maintain the laptop cooling channel... by using a can of canned air every 3 to 6 months to ensure the heat sink is clear.  Third, you need to learn how to take apart your laptop down to the point of being able to remove your motherboard... because the cooling assembly is mounted to the motherboard, in such a way that most motherboards would have to be unscrewed and turned over.  Then, you can remove the fan, and physically examine the leading edges of the heat sink.

A laptop that overheats from the moment it came out of the box, has a cooling assembly problem... or a faulty motherboard.