This is actually a problem I've sort of had prior to Skyrim, but now that I'm playing Skyrim it's happening far more than I would like and I want to be certain of what exactly the cause is.

When I'm playing the game, one or two things happens on occasion. I have my laptop (a Gateway P-7811FX with 512 MB 9800M NVIDIA graphics card) hooked up to my TV via HDMI. After playing awhile the picture will go weird, then I get a "No Signal" message-on some occasion my laptop will just shut off by itself after a few seconds but mostly it just sits there, still "on" but sending no signal to my TV. From the research I've done, it might be an overheating issue. But there are a few things that make me question whether this is the case:

• I have a window open, it's the middle of the Fall and right now there's a particularly cold breeze coming through.
  
• When I've felt the vents on my laptop after the "crash" it's felt kind of lukewarm-like, not scalding hot or anything.
  
• I've tried using canned air to get any dust out, though I may not have been thorough enough-and my laptop has been sitting around for quite awhile without being cleaned.
  
• Even when I reduce the graphics settings to the absolute bare minimum this problem still occurs.

What's even more odd is that I'd been playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution at the default reccomended settings for my computer and I don't remember ever having this problem with it. I've occasionally had this problem with Minecraft if I'm running it with Google Chrome open or something. Could it be a RAM issue (I have 4GB but I've read that Skyrim only uses 2 unless a special patch is applied to it)? I have little to nothing else running at the same time, though-just Steam and a few other things which hardly use any memory.

I have purchased a laptop cooling pad which I haven't hooked up yet but I would kind of like to know for sure if overheating is the cause or if my GPU is somehow damaged or something. I can play anytime from a number of hours to only a few minutes before this happens. My GPU seems to especially hate The Mind of Pelagius which is awful for me because Sheogorath is my favorite Daedric Prince.

Oh yes and I have updated to the latest drivers, which seemed to help a little at first.