Laptop Suddenly Shutting Down

Hello everyone

I recently purchased a refurbished laptop and have been having a few issues with it. The first problem occurred when I tried to view flash videos. The video would start, then abruptly cut to black, the sound continuing and the whole unpleasant affair warranting a hard restart. This was resolved by simply disabling hardware acceleration. At that point I figured I was in the clear.

However, a new problem has unfortunately arisen. The system suddenly shuts off whenever I try to start certain games, including KOTOR, STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl and the demo for Anomaly: Warzone. The first two aren't officially compatible with Windows 7, but the last one certainly is. The problem seems to be exasperated, or to occur in accordance with, full-screen windows. (I'm developing a phobia of the things!) In spite of this, various other games run just fine, including World of Goo, Terraria, Dungeons of Dredmor and the Bastion demo. Of course these games are less graphically demanding, but I'd think that my laptop could at the very least manage KOTOR. My last one did and it had a full gig less RAM.

The specs:

Processor: AMD Turion II P540
Graphics Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470
RAM Amount: 4.0 GB
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition (build 7600), 64-bit

Idle CPU temp is between 45 and 50, rising to the 50-60 range when one of the functional games is running.

So, any suggestions?

 

99% of the time when a system shuts off, it is because of heat.
You need to do something to get cooler temps.
If you are brave, open the laptop up and clean out the inside.
My laptop and netbooks rest on passive coolers. It is a mat with granules that change to a gel as they absorb the heat generated by a laptop/netbook.

Before I got the passive cooling mats, I rested my laptop on two thin pieces of wood above the desktop surface to let air under the laptop.

 

The laptop is currently situated on a cooling pad on my desk. It's only a few weeks old.

While I certainly agree that the temps could be soaring when I launch certain applications, I have not been able to check; The system shuts down before I can get a reading.

I've also read that insufficient power usage can cause sudden shut downs. I changed the power plan from "Energy Star" to "Balanced," but for what it's worth, the power brick is tiny. It's only about the size of the charger I use for my PSP. Could that have something to do with it?