hi guys, i have a toshiba tecra 8100 laptop. It has pentium 3 500mhz 10gb hard drive, cd drive. Well today i was using it and it was so hot. There is an area on the side of laptop where the air comes out. The air is also very very hot. It smells like burning. I was wondering if the cpu fan could be broken. Or is there any other fan in laptops. The laptop isnt under the warranty anymore. I stopped using it cause I think it will be burneed after a while. What should I do? Thanks for your suggestions.

The vents on the side are for the power supply which is the part that gets the hottest on a laptop. Can you feel air coming out if you stick your hand by the vent? If so, then the power supply fan is working. There may or may not be a fan on the CPU. My 500 MHz Sony Vaio laptop doesn't have one. If the CPU is getting too hot, the computer will lock up. Does this happen? I notice that my laptop does get quite hot if I use it for several hours playing games or watching DVD's. So hot in fact, I can't even sit it in my lap any more or it would burn my leg. The heat is only generated in the back-left corner of the laptop which is where the power supply for my Vaio is located. The air coming out the vents is also extremely hot. There is nothing wrong with my laptop that I am aware of though. I think its pretty normal for laptops to get hot if used a lot. Lloyd

Sorry, missed the part about the burning smell. That's probably not normal. Your power supply could be on its way out. How handy are you with a screwdriver and a multimeter? There are some things you could check inside the laptop if you're brave enough to take it apart.

I agree with Lloyd. Laptops to tend to get a bit hot. My Dell is the same, it has two fans on the right rear although it is rare for both of them to be on. Even then the case get to got to sit on your lap. If it is an Intel CPU it will do one of two things. It will slow down to use less power and therefore run cooler, or it will just shut itself off. Stuart