I have a HP Pavillion dv9000 laptop, and I'm having some serious overheating problems. I've got an Intel Core2 @ 2.0 gHz, and a GeForce 7600 card. Anytime I do anything graphically-intensive, the cpu temperature skyrockets. I installed notebook hardware control to monitor it, and I've recorded cpu temperatures well above 80 C. I'm getting a little worried, because I'm starting to get artifacts when I load up Half-Life 2 that don't go away until I change resolution a couple times. The only way I can use my laptop is to place an inch-and-a-half minimum thick book under it so that I get enough airflow to keep it cool. If I place it flat on the table, firefox and microsoft word open at the same time are enough to trip the laptop off. Is there anything I can do to fix this? It'd probably be all right if the fan would run full-bore all the time, but it doesn't come on until it's too late. Is there some setting I can change to set the heat-threshold for the fan to run? Or could this be caused by dust buildup, maybe?

Download RivaTuner and you can turn up your fans or underclock your GPU a bit.

I'm guessing that something is wrong with your laptop. There are two reviews on that specific model on notebookreview.com (though they have the 1.6Ghz version) and none of them mention any heat problems. One even says:

Quote:
The only time I have ever felt the notebook get even mildly warm was after a long session of playing F.E.A.R. After quite a bit of stress on all the components used during the game, it was still very comfortable to have on my lap.

I hope you get it fixed soon! Good luck and Happy New Year!

Was it always like this or did it start happening recently?

This happened after about 1 year with my laptop (Toshiba M40), it would actually get so hot it would start to burn if I had it near me and the CPU would almost right away go into power saving mode, which really didn't help.

Anyway to make a long story short the easiest way to fix this (and it's dirt cheap and incredibly easy) is to buy a can of compressed air and dust the whole thing. Only a little dust came out of my laptop, but afterwards I went from 20fps to a constant 60 (vsynced) and it didn't overheat after.

Thanks, I'll try the canned air idea. It wouldn't surprise me if it was plugged full of dust, since I've got a wood furnace.
RivaTuner doesn't seem to be able to access my fans, for some reason.

Another option is that one of your internal fans actually died. You might want to open it up and check it out, if you're good at that sort of thing. Or send it back for warranty repair, if the compressed air doesn't work.