I've been having some problems with my laptop recently. It's 4 years old and earlier this summer I noticed that it sometimes, apparently without reason, turned itself off. I decided to research this when I noticed once that its case felt hot, and found that laptops can turn themselves off as a safety measure when they got too hot. So I found out the maximum operating temperature of my laptop (55C/ 131F) and downloaded a couple of programs which measure the temperature of the hard disk drive. On one occasion, when it got to 50C, I got a desktop fan and directed it at the computer fans at the back of the laptop, and this worked and also seemed to increase the efficiency of the fans too.

Now I am abroad with my laptop and it is overheating daily. It is on a table with a big window which I can open and it cools it down, but I can't keep opening the window as the weather will soon be turning much colder. The hard disk drive temperature of the laptop regularly increases to 48-50C if I don't open the window first. Now, for instance, I decided to open the window because the hard disk drive temp was 45C (113F) and I keep the window open until its temperature is 36C (96.8F) ... but today it is refusing to go lower than 37C

Is there anything I can do to stop the computer overheating in the first place? I really can't keep opening the window; it's both impractical and makes me cold too.