@neem: Very informative article. Thanks for posting that!
@wwwKris: What this article says is good, and it helps you with managing your Power Consumption during the different modes of operation of your laptop; for example "running on battery" and "running on AC power only-no battery". These are the 2 modes that laptops typically use that traditional desktop PCs do not concern themselves with since they only have the latter mode and not the former. You should know that laptops only will produce a 5-7 deg C drop in temp by changing your Power Options, at best. A proven way for the non-technical user to more significantly reduce their heat production in the laptop, can be done by using a well designed Cooler Pad, such as the Thermaltake Massive model here:
https://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-...g_4?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=24M6F0TAR7Q263WPSMM7
Modern Cooler Pads reduced my temps drastically from upper 60s deg C to low 70s deg C down into the 40s-50s deg C! These are 20 deg C and more drops in my temps on my dual-core Sony laptop (2008) running W7/W10. In fact, when running extreme stress-testing software such as
Heavy Load and others on my Sony, I can produce temps in both my cores above 72 deg C during heavy applications such as continuous streaming of online media such as Neflix & Amazon Prime (online TV). I was looking for a solution, as you are to keep my temps down. I'm an engineer by trade, and I spent months analyzing and playing with the 2 power mode options above, and could never produce results that could fix the problem. Most of my use of that laptop (85%) is used for an entertainment device hooked up to my HDMI LCD TV, so therefore I use it on AC power rather than battery except for occasional battery use at Customer sites while troubleshooting Wi-Fi networks for example.
What this has allowed me to do, is to keep using this 8 year old laptop which cost me $1100 at the time still running, even though it has some thermal damage, hence the need for the Cooler Pad to keep the temps down. This has allowed me to forego a $300 Mobo replacement or a several hundred dollar replacement of the entire laptop to something newer now for almost 2 years. Once your laptop begins to produce operating temps above the 72 deg C mark (
160 deg F), it becomes thermally damaged, or cooked, and can never be fixed.
This is a stop-gap measure and depending on your budget, you may wish to just replace your laptop if you determine it's suffered permanent thermal damage. Easiest way to determine this is to monitor your CPU core temps using a program such as
CPU-Z ID or HWINFO64 or SPECCY. If your CPU core temps exceed the
72 deg C mark at
ANY time during low-usage apps or idle such as just sitting on the Windows desktop or having 1 browser page open, you probably have thermal damage.
If you run a stress-test program such as the
Heavy Load and you get occasional over-temp (>72 deg C) readings, you have the beginnings of thermal damage but it's not at the point where the Cores have failed and you can continue to operate the laptop, but those high temps mean that there is partial damage and the longer you run it at those temps the more damage will occur until the laptop will only run for like 30 sec. without shutting down due to overtemp sensor readings. At that point, it's too late because no one can use a laptop that only runs for 30 sec. whether on AC power or Battery, right?
You have to either replace the Mobo (very expensive) or replace the laptop.
You're laptop is about 7 years old (similar to mine) since it came with W7 (unless you upgraded to W7 from XP or Vista), in which case it's even older. That means you may gain 1-2 years of operation using the Cooler Pad solution, but that's it. If your computer is older such as 2001-2009,
YOU HAVE EVEN LESS TIME BEFORE COMPLETE CATASTROPHIC FAILURE! 
What's great about this solution *the Cooler Pad*, is that it gives you time to save for a replacement laptop and to get ready mentally and financially to do that, without having to panic and go out and drain your bank account or max your credit card to buy a new laptop tomorrow morning.
In your Post, you don't mention what your laptop is doing as a result of getting hot, besides burning your thighs if you run the laptop from your lazy-boy recliner as I do, is it crashing/hanging/freezing/shutting down when it gets hot? So, I have to guess it's doing something you don't like functionally, or just burning your flesh off your body.
In all cases, the Cooler Pad solution is a Band-Aid, not a permanent solution, and I'm probably only another year or so away from having to replace my Sony, as if my Mobo goes, I'm buying a new laptop. Laptops built today rarely last over 10 years, so neither of us will be running our old laptops much after 2018-2019. If it buys you or I another 1-2 years however, it's well worth the
$20-$30 investment don't you agree? Lastly, I have used this solution for several of my Customers with aging laptops, and they are so thankful for this simple solution to stretch their investment out a bit further.
Hope this gives you some insight into your problem.
Best of luck,
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>
