100*c is too hot. Help me get cool.

[Starscream]

80C is probably not considered overheating, yet. If what you've said was true, that you had tons of dust and dirt in the fan, it stands to reason that there is also a good amount of that same dust and dirt clogging the heatsink fins as well. If that's true, it probably won't be long until you get up over 80C again. For what it's worth, I've recently redid my thermal paste and cleaned everything out and I'm not running at 80C even when overclocked. I used to get temperatures over 80C before I did this.

Now, I can't guarantee that your laptop is going to run really cool after you're done, but since you had temperatures over 100C, you should really just take the laptop apart and do a full examination. If it were me, I'd make sure I got the dust out of everything (not just the fan) and then redo the thermal paste. After you're done, you don't have to worry about that again for several years.

[NaturalViolence]

Maximum safe temperatures depend on which cpu you have. Generally speaking newer cpus can tolerate higher temperatures than older cpus and mobile cpus can tolerate higher temperatures than desktop cpus (due to having less operating voltage among other differences). For a modern laptop 80C is considered ok. SS is right, 100C is too high for almost anything.

[JT!]

I cleaned out the heatsink fins too.

Next time I start having overheating issues I'll redo the thermal paste. Would have done it this time but it was still in the mail.