I have a Gateway laptop thats never been great since day one. At rest it stays at about 55 C, and when compiling, or something thats a load on the processor, it stays around 88 C . Needless to say it shuts down on me a lot.

Anyways, I had it running the other day and I left for a minute, came back and it was frozen. (Gentoo Linux) couldn't switch to a terminal or anything, and there were some graphic artifacts at the top of the screen. Ive never had Linux lock up on me like that. When I restarted, the bios screen came up, but was all screwed up, similar to what I've seen when my old desktops video card died. I tried starting it a few more times, and it would come on, beep 3 times, then shut down. I left it alone for awhile, and then tried again, and it worked fine. Worked good for a day, and now its hard to get it to start. Either it will do nothing, screen won't even turn on, or it starts fine. My gut says the video card, but Im not sure. Is it even a card in laptops, or is it built in? Its a Gateway 600XL, with Radeon 7500M. Warranty ran out in May, so I'd like to try and do what I can before I have to call Gateway and deal with the morons.

thanks.

I should add to, when it doesn't start up, the machine stays on, and the fan keeps running, but it never does anything else, no screen, no HD or CD , just the fan.

If your processor gets up to 88C for an extended period of time I would suspect either the heatsink is loose, the thermal pad is damaged or missing, or your cooling fan is not working properly. Some systems do use a separate video card but I would suspect your processor is the cause of your problems. Even 55C at rest seems to high to me.