my laptop overheated!
 

My Lenovo ThinkPad W510 just overheated today. The laptop, like many others, is configured to sleep when the lid is closed. For some reason, however, it didn't sleep when I packed up. When I arrived home, the laptop was so hot that I thought my backpack was going to catch on fire! In addition, part of the LCD screen was off-color, a common symptom of overheating.

The laptop also has a history of other problems, although they are relatively minor:

1) The laptop sometimes slows down by a factor of ten. Restarting the computer seems to solve this problem, though.
2) If I turn on the laptop while it's plugged in, it will run slower, as if it's using battery power. Pulling out the power cord and plugging it back in solves the problem.
3) The other day, the screen suddenly went back, and I then got an error message that said something about a problem with an Nvidia driver.

Has anyone else ever had problems with the Lenovo ThinkPad W510? In the context of GIMPS, what are the chances that my two double checks will turn out incorrect?

For number 3:
I had a graphics card from nvidia a while back that kept on doing that every so often(does it turn on again after a second or 2). I found a forum thread several hundred posts long filled with people with this problem. Some had it fixed by driver updates eventually. I was one of the last to get a fix for my pc.
Try a driver update every so often and hope that it fixes the problem eventually.

My work has used Thinkpads for around 6-10 years both IBM and Lenovo versions. There always seems to be overheating problems for all people using them. It seems to always be the fan fails and then they overheat.

Check your cooling fan.

Because of all the repairs my company is always doing on Thinkpads we are now moving to HP laptops.

Grant.

Is it possible to check whether Prime95 reported an error, or do I have to wait until the test is complete?