How do you run diagnostics for hardware problems

I have a Fujitsu N Series notebook and I am having hardware problems. The notebook heats up rather quickly and becomes very very hot and shuts down automatically. Also the screen is jumbled with random characters during bootup. I just want to know to things.
1. Which hardware is causing this problem
2. If you don't know is there any software I can use to diagnose my laptop so that I can find out what the problem is?

Thanks

 

Well on a desktop, when the computer shuts down automatically, it's usually a powersupply failure..where the powersupply can't keep up with the system and it will lock up or just plain shut down.

The random characters on boot up usually means something is corrupted in the BIOS...maybe even a certain component has failed, which would leave the bios showing random characters...when my CDRW died, on boot it'd show random characters for the drive.. are these charactors showing up when it finds certain devices?? exactly when? hit esc when you are booting up, it will show all the details of the boot

I'm not sure if this applies to a laptop.

If i was you, i'd do a fresh install of windows XP ... see what happens after that...if it your problem persists, i'd then move onto calling Fujitsu tech suppor and/or take it in... im not sure if much if anything on a laptop is servicable besides the HDD, and RAM


Jesse