laptop shuts down

[Ace3891]

recently my laptop been shutting down when running certain programs, the thing is my laptop ran the same programs before without shutting down. thought it was overheating, but i can leave my laptop for hours without it shutting down till i start those prog. i thought maybe it's a virus, so did scan, found nothing. defrag hd to see if that migth help, but nothing, any ideas? thanks

[jlreich]

What programs? There is a difference in just leaving it idle and running a resource intensive program.

Does it do it on a lot of programs or just a certain program?

It may be fine at idle, then when you get it going it gets too hot and shuts down.

I would check for dust bunnies in the fan area.

What make/model laptop?

There may be a log in the BIOS that might tell you why it shut down.

[Ace3891]

I have an Acer Aspire. It shuts down when I'm running emulators and sometimes when I'm running programs like AnyDVD or DVDFab. I ran all those programs before without a glitch, I play the emulator for hours before and nothing happens. I'll check if there's any dust build up after I post. Thanks.