A customer brought in a Sony Vaio VPCEB2M0E that was cutting out within an hour of switching it on. This is usually a sign of the central processor unit (CPU) overheating.
This particular Sony Vaio is not too difficult to take to bits. All screws on the bottom need undoing, there are a couple in the battery compartment. The hard drive needs to come out as does the DVD rewriter. Once all the screws are out of the bottom the keyboard comes out by placing a knife carefully at the top of the keyboard and levering out. Careful as the ribbon cable attaching the keyboard to the motherboard is quite short. Undo the other connectors and then the bottom black plastic will separate from the main unit showing the motherboard.
Undo the screws circled and the disconnect the power from the fan where the arrow points and the then gently remove the heatsink from the CPU and motherboard.
Clean the old thermal paste away from the heatsink until the copper part is as smooth as possible.
Remove the old thermal paste from the CPU circled. In this extreme case the past was rock hard, I used a plastic spludger (could use a plastic pen top or plastic knife) to remove the worst.
Once both the CPU and the heatsink are free of old thermal paste clean both items with a CPU cleaning fluid to get the remaining residue from both. Once clean they should look like this:
Now apply new thermal paste to the CPU and fix the heatsink back to the motherboard. Remember to screw opposing corners of the heatsink in first.
Put the laptop back together and all should be well.
Original photos here Sony Vaio VPCEB2M0E images Please feel free to use as you wish.