I have a Dell Studio 17 laptop, a refurbished model almost 2 years old...It is currently running Windows 7 32-bit, Home Premium. Via a clean install, it is a Vista upgrade machine...A while back, a problem started to develop while running Vista that it would suddenly just turn off. No warnings, messages, anything. It was like I had the battery out, then just unplugged it from the wall. Just like that. Over several months of this happening (or more), I've observed several things...First, it only seems to happen when I'm doing memory-intensive things, such as watching a online video full screen or running many applications in the background...Second, I can tell when it is about to "flip" as I've termed it, when the fan starts running...the computer gets really hot in places...

Anyways, I'm pretty sure this is a hardware problem, because it still exists, even after a Vista-to-7 Upgrade...Is this true? Hardware vs. software?

Is there anything I can do to fix this? Is it just a specific component or what? What do you recommend?

Thanks!!