My sister is in Africa and she just called in tears because her computer doesn't work and she's at her homestay so she's by herself and needs to do papers.

The symptoms she gave were:
It gets REALLY hot then it turns off
She has turned it on, it gets hot and then gets what she called a "dark blue screen". It then dims as if having been unplugged, then gets a "bright blue screen"
She says it's not the blue screen of death.
The last time she turned it on she was trying to get a paper off of her USB stick and it GOT really hot, turned off, and now she can't turn it on.

It's a DELL laptop, she's had it for 2 years, and I think she's on XP.

She says it's been giving her trouble for a while. She doesn't connect to the internet though and doesn't print from her comp.
PLEASE HELP:( She's alone and I hate know she's so miserable.If CPU fan has failed this could be at the root of the trouble. Not a good situation.

I WONDER tho too - if she uses the laptop with good underside clearance, and whether the air intake slots are clear of lint etc. All she can do I think is look under and CHECK for obstruction - keep the thing clear of any restriction to air flow.

Fans are usually pretty quiet but maybe she could listen carefully and see if she can hear any fan at all - just to try and tell if there is cooling.

How long from switch-on before the over heating I wonder? Could she go in thru safe mode and stay functional? If so then she could perhaps check for any processes that might be hogging CPU to LEAD to over heating in full Win mode (assuming as you suggest this is XP she uses). Sounds like this amount of over heating is bad - over temp on CPUs is not good news.

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and now she can't turn it on