Friend's computer problem

hello everybody. long time no post!! My friend has a problem with his computer :

His laptop, an advent 7026 (quite an oldie), has a problem with overheating, as he tells me.

He says his computer shuts down automatically after about 2 or 3 hours -even less when he's gaming on wesites. He tells me that his computer overheats and shuts down because of it. I don't really know if it's to do with this or not but it was not like this a couple of years back.

He wants to know what really causes this problem but he thinks it's that as well - he is unsure.

PS he cannot open the computer as it does not have guarantee or any sort of recovery plan so if he does anything wrong then it's bye bye laptop!

Any guidance would be greatly apreciated. regards :grinthumb

Try downloading something like speedfan http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php which should give you some ideas of temperatures, if it is high I would suggest trying a can of compressed air and blowing out the fan ducts to clean out the heatsink on the processor. Do this with the laptop switched off cos you don't want to stop the fan and possibly fry the cpu.