Well, I gave my notebbok to a friend to fix and just got it back, which is why I was so delayed in responding. He took it apart and couldn't find anything wrong with it...translation: he didn't know what he was doing and was talking out his ass. Anyways, I bought one of those bases with the fans in it and it keeps it considerably cooler. I don't travel with much so I guess I'm happy since it does what I want it to do again. I'm going to try to get the heat sink off someday, but for now it works which was the goal.

Thank you all again for your help, it was very appreciated