Various BSODs, please help?

[Interloper]

Well, I've had the thermal paste on for a week or so now. I've had less BSOD's, but my system has simply been abruptly shutting off instead. I figure its a heat thing. The thermal paste doesn't appear to have made much difference to the temperatures. I've also experienced decreased performance - most noticeably, the computer seems to have trouble keeping up with the framerates when I try to play movies :S All I can put it down to is the firmware scaling back performance because of the heat - but I would have thought it would be less of an issue now. The paste that had been on there was fried.

 

[Dave76]

Check your CPU core temps with RealTemp and post the results at idle and under load, Prime95 for a minute should give you the max load temp.

It sounds like CPU throttling due to over heating.
Is the fan working properly?
Too much thermal paste can cause problems, it should be a very thin layer.

If your core temps aren't still high, then take out one of the RAM cards and run memtest86+ for a full 7 passes.
This will take several hours so best to run overnight. You can stop the test if you get any errors.
Then repeat with the other RAM card.

For reference, Crucial RAM is guaranteed to run on Dells.
DDR2 Upgrade for the Dell Precision M4300 Laptop/Notebook

You can try other brands, the RAM required for your laptop is listed on the above link.

 

[Interloper]

Well, more or less idling right now ~15% load the temp is 44 degrees celsius.

I ran a torture test in Prime 95 and it immediately shot to 90, and then floated around 96-98, with the CPU throttling within a minute. The fan appears to be working fine, plenty of air coming out of the back vent at the moment.

I let my sister's boyfriend apply the thermal paste, since he'd allegedly done it before. I wouldn't say he used a thin layer, but we expected it would flatten out when we pressed the heatsink down.

I bought a cooling mat on eBay yesterday, to see if it helps at all. Even if it doesn't solve the problems with this laptop, I'll likely still have a use for it with future laptops.

 

[Dave76]

Those temps are pretty high, you should pull the heatsink off and check the thermal paste.
If any is coming out the side of the CPU, there is too much on there.

Clean it off again and re-apply.

Should be a thin layer, enough to fill the microscopic holes in the metal surface.
It's not meant to be a layer between the CPU and heatsink, this will result in higher temps.