Laptop crashes while gaming

Gateway P-6860
8800M GTS
4gb RAM (only 3.x gb due to 32bit OS)
XP 32bit


I have recently stumbled upon a problem with my laptop in which it crashes after playing a game for awhile. I noticed it first while playing the Left 4 dead 2 demo where my laptop would make an audible click (that is normal with a shutdown) then the screen would flash and turn off completely and the audio that was playing would hang and keep repeating until I hard powered it down. Initially I played it off as a bug in L4D2 so I played Fallout 3, same thing happened a few minutes later and this is weird because I have been playing Fallout 3 for ages on this thing without a single problem.

I havent updated or used any patches and my laptop's heat seems irrelevant, this is because my laptop gets MUCH hotter when decompressing a rar archive. When this started happening I tried to clean my laptop out (literally, not harddrive wise) but it still happened, this time with Borderlands.

Right now I am running the hard drive error checker and then I am going to defrag my drives.

Anyone know what I must do to stop this from happening? If you need me to I will post any further required information. Thank you

 

8800M GTS driver version : 6.14.11.8520
if it matters

 

I know for L4D2 reinstalling and disabling multicore rendering helped me with my freezing/crashing problem.

I have a Gateway P-7805u

 

I had this problem too until I saw a fix on these forums. You have to install Rivatuner and go to driver settings > system settings and force constant performance level to performance 3D.

 

ipodman715, but this fix decrease the performance =/
At least in my case that happened.

 

I had the same problem when I first got my 7811. It would do this will playing call of duty 4. Well I discovered that my temps were toooo high. Gpu and cpu were around 200 degrees. I cleaned out the vents and the fan blades with q tips and with air and installed RMCLOcK.What a difference, its a year later and I havent had any problems since then.I played l4d for a few hours and had no problems, plus now my temps average around the most 140 degrees no matter how hard I play. Also have cpuid running in the background while U are playing, and hit the windows key to check out what your temps are during game play. I feel for U this drove nuts for while but thanks to the people in this forum I was able to fix my problem good luck.