2006 MacBook Pro shutting down several times (heat?) during clean install

Question

Hi guys,
Title pretty much says it all: I upgraded from Tiger to SL last weekend, and thought that some apps were running funny, so I decided to do a clean install instead. I must add at this point that my system was completely up-to-date. So tonight, around 6:30 French time, I put the SL DVD in my SuperDrive, rebooted my MBP, pressed the option key to get a choice between booting from the MacintoshHD drive or the DVD, selected the latter, chose the language, options (Rosetta, no other language but French, etc...), and off I went. About ten minutes later, my MBP shut down abruptly, and I thought that was because it was overheating. I installed on top of a rotating fan I have at home, which is currently blowing from below on the underside of my Mac. As far as I can tell, no overheating to speak of. Still.
My MBP just shut down again, for the seventh or eight time now, while the progress bar stated there was about 30 minutes left before install was completed. I'm at a loss here, guys, because even though the SL install will (supposedly) pick up where it left when the computer shut down, it's gonna take me forever to actually install SL, if I can at all. And since I formatted my HD prior to the first install attempt, I'm pretty much screwed. Right now, I'm going to try another install with an external DVD drive, just in case, but I doubt it will change anything. My MBP has always been prone to overheating and abruptly shutting down, and the fact that the internal fans are not working during install probably doesn't help...
So, in a nutshell, can you guys help, suggest, propose, do something to let me make an SL clean install on this piece of (expensive) junk? Or should I ride the elevator four floors down and dump it in the trash? Of course, I could (try to) reinstall Tiger, then upgrade (if I can...), but what would be the point...?

Answer 1

Did I read correctly - your internal fan/blower is not working at all? Normally when your laptop gets hot you should hear a loud noise from the blower. If the blower is not kicking in during the intall then this is not normal and will result in what you are seeing - a shut down due to your chip temperature getting too hot. In laptops the thermal cooling is always an issue due to reduced space. There is a heat pipe to move the heat off the chip to the side and then a blower (not really a fan - no room, use a blower technology). And if the blower is not working you are out of luck. You could consider repairing, but you are talking about a 5 yr old laptop.
A fan blowing on the bottom of the laptop is not a very good cooling mechanism. If you must you could put the laptop on top of "ice packs" the frozen gel bags. Maybe this will get you through the process. And the external DVD is a good idea (but in general relying on cooling through the case is a bad idea). But in the long run you need to repair or replace the laptop if the blower is not working.
If you got 5 good years out of a laptop you have gotten your money's worth, honestly. At my work we rotate out laptops each 3 years (use to be every 2 years). The manufacturers also consider 3 yrs to be a normal life (I know - Macs are more expensive so should work forever, I am just restating what I have read).