Vista crash during bootup

[Mici]

Its a friends lap top, and every time he boots it up it will go for a min and just turn off. Then when you restart it gets faster and faster to the point that it turns off. Leave it alone for a time and it will last longer, up to 15min. Poped out the battery too, and running off just wall power.

Don't know much about the hardware, don't have time to get in and look at things closely.

Any ideas?
Thanks

[Akucaen]

Specs of the laptop, and the last few (known) installed programs?

[Mici]

Its a persario c500
OS: Vista Home Premium
Processor: C556CA: Intel® Pentium® Dual Core processor T2060 1.60 GHz, 533MHz
Memory: 1g

A really odd thing, it seems to only do it on a admin account, the guest account will stay on np, but as soon as I try to do something on the guest account and it asks me to put in a password for one of the admin accounts it dies.

Latest programs are
Viewpoint Media Player
Bloackland
AIM 6

[Bunnykillah]

Sounds like it might be overheating. If it lasts longer from not being started in a while and the battery is taken out of the equation, then overheating is what I am thinking. Reason it doesn't last as long after rebooting from a crash is because whatever is overheating doesn't get a chance to cool down.