Satellite A500-1DN - Crashing while playing games

Question

Hi all,
My friend bought a Toshiba satellite A500-1DN about 2 months ago. After around 2 weeks she decided to put 2 games on it (guildwars and jedi knight academy). We soon realized that after about 1 hour of gaming, the computer would crash to a black screen rather than going to a blue screen of death. This meant there was no hint of what was specifically causing the problem and no mini dumps from windows...
Having had troubles with those specific games myself on Windows 7, I thought it must be the games.
About a week later she spent around an hour looking through youtube videos only to find that her computer crashed in the same way as the game. So I put some diagnostic software on the computer. Processor / graphic card overheating? But nothing, the temperatures were stable and acceptable and certainly wouldnt have been the cause of these crashes, unless I unluckily missed the point where it did over heat shrugs so I didn't outrule it...
Due to the problem so far seeming to be video related, I downloaded new nvidia drivers (unfortunately the official ones didnt work and I had to hunt for a custom .inf). It didn't solve the problem but the driver seemed to be functioning suitably well.
So in our rage, we sent it back stating that it may be that the cooling for the laptop, ie copper pipes were not sufficient for the graphics card and Toshiba said they had cleaned the computer up replaced thermal paste, all that typical stuff... which seems very fair. We got it back. We played a game and it crashed within 10 minutes. Perhaps even worse than when it left.
Is there anything else that could be causing this problem - video related activites causing crash of computer without going to BSOD or returning any specific errors. What about RAM? I have even uninstalled the HDD protection thinking it might be causing some compatibility problems.
I need some guidance.
The spec is:
Intel core 2 DUO CPU T6600 2.20GHz
Nvidia Geforce GT 230M
4GB RAM

Answer 1

To the above commenter.
Thanks for bashing my response I appreciate I may not be the best computer person under the sun, however I do think my IT degree counts for something!
Also if you hadn't noticed the huge number of people complaining about this issue, if you haven't had the issue good for you, however for those of us that are still struggling you telling us to download patches and BIOs and what not that are completely none related to our issue I find to some what unhelpful.
As for playing with my laptop on my knee, It is also on top of cooling pad which lifts the fans well clear of any clogging.
And if the layout and design of the laptop isn't a problem how come there are so many issues regarding this problem? While I appreciate that you think you know what you are talking about regarding the N series laptops they also have far less RAM, usually don't have a dedicated graphics card and also have the same sized cooling system to cool a much smaller machine.
I have in fact had the pleasure of speaking with my representative who was very sympathetic with my issue and has currently applied to try a replacement and if I am still having an issue will give me either an equal or upgrade which is very kind of them.
This is not a cheap laptop and we should not be having the number of issues described by many owners.
I still believe that some of our computers are just "dud" computers and while the issue with some of them is Extreme like my own, some of you don't seem to have the issue.
There is no current fix for this issue and I would suggest taking it back to you local Toshiba service centre and discuss with them options as they are generally understanding if you are still having issues after the first few visits!
Will keep you updated!