My Dell 5100 just crapped out. Turns on but freezes 5-10 minutes later. I think it gets overheated pretty fast. Don’t know what to do. :-(
I have a dell that has had the same problem you describe. What you need to do is get a can of air and blow out the fans on the side and bottom of the laptop. If you feel confident, look up how to remove the keyboard and blow out under the keyboard too.
This will solve your problem in 95% of cases.
I solved a similar problem with an Lenovo thinkpad by setting it in front of my desktop fan while it was on until a replacement fan and motherboard could be located and installed.
I had the same problem with two computers in my house. My wifey’s laptop would shut off. I took the bottom off to access the fan and there and a 40 foot tall dust bunny in the fan. After a dustbunnectomy, and a general blowing out the fan area, it ran 30-ish degrees cooler.
On my laptop, I had to pull the fan off the CPU chip, clean it by ever-so-gently scraping off the old dried up thermal paste, re-thermalpaste it, and reassemble. I took 20 degrees C off my standby temperature, and 25-30 off max operating temperature.
Blowing canned air from the outside would have solved neither of my problems. Both required a screwdriver.