Dell XPS m710 Graphics Freezing - Opinions to get started?

OK, I know this is an older laptop, but since I have recently given it to my kids the issue I had noticed on occasion earlier seems to be occurring every day.

Specs:
- XPS m710, P4 2.53GHz processor
- 4GB RAM / 100 GB
- 512MB 7800GTX graphics
- WinXP
- etc.

Even back in '07/'08 I would notice that when gaming it would occasionally hard-lock and require a forced shutdown and restart.

Now I have set up my kids with Steam (Portal, HL1 & 2, etc), Neverwinter Nights (orig), and a few RTS. Now they are finding pretty much *every* time they play a game that after a while (at least 40 - 60 minutes, so it isn't ever instant) the system will hard lock.

To me that sounds like a heat issue rather than a driver / OS issue. I had a copy of Vista lying around, so I wiped the system and installed that, but haven't had a chance to test it yet.

Just looking for advice on what I should do to check the heat issue, and if there is any cost-effective (this *is* a nearly 4 year old laptop now) way to deal with it?

 

Have you tried dusting out the machine yet? Heat issues on older machines are very commonly the result of many years' worth of crud jamming up fans and heatsinks...