Ok , I know this is not realy linux related but I've just got an old laptop form work and it seems to over heat. The one chip(my guess is that it is the north bridge) on the motherboard gets so hot that the keyboard starts to do strange things i.e If you press a key it types that key plus some of the characters close by. It is a Rever Cruiser laptop 233mhz MMX. I've clocked it down to 166mhz but this does not help. Could it be that if the CPU gets hot that the north bridge chip will get hot too ? The laptop displays a litte tap sign (there where it says if your hdd or floppy drive / cdrom is working) on the small lcd screen above the keyboard. What does this mean? water damage ?

Help!

A tap icon (on a laptop) usually has something to do with the battery. Specifically the draw on the battery.

Have you checked if the fan is working? It could be that you have a fan controlled by a temperature sensor, and the sensor has stopped working. In which case I would suggest you wire that fan right to the power supply too keep it running all the time.

Or the tap icon may indicate that the laptop is running in low power mode, which may involve halting the fan to save energy. Does the tap have "water" coming out of it?

It may sound odd, but I have a laptop that shows a tap with varying amounts of water coming out of it. A lot of water means it is at full power mode, and no water at all means it was in low power mode.

Yes there's water comming from the tap (lots) . The fan is working (only has 2 wires) but I think its blowing in the wrong direction(factory fault ?). The laptop also refuses to boot from floppy. I think the fan would blow in the opposite direction if I switch the wirres. Do you think the northbridge chip gets hot because the cpu fan blows in the wrong direction (this chip is quite near the cpu).

Does anyone know where I can get a bios update for this laptop ?

It was the keyboard all the time....Now it works fine.