They have cooling fans, I read all the posts, if someone suggested this I missed it. Listen for the fan, you should be able to hear it and feel the air being pushed by it, somewhere on the sides or back of it. Mine is a DELL, and the fan only comes on intermittently, it doesnt run constantly. That may be why the cooling pad is working for the time being.

If the fan is failing or has failed, everything will overheat. If you dont want to lose all your school work, you should tend to it immediately, because it WILL cause failure to other components, sooner than later. Back up everything regularly, nothing is ever guaranteed with computers.

This is the obvious, but could be your power supply unit, even your adapter or any other number of things, dont wait for the inevitable, it may not be salvageable if the worst happens.