My laptop is overheating and shutting down

Donna goforth, yes it sure could be. First thing to check is that the air inlet vents are not obstructed. If those are good, you will have to disassemble your Laptop.. the clean it properly of any kind of dust etc. Replace the thermal paste on the CPU and check the fan. I would definitely replace the fan since the computer is disassembled anyway. Use this decent video to work on your Toshiba.

Most of the time with older laptops the thermal grease between the heatsink and CPU gets dried out. you have to remove the motherboard and remove the old thermal compound and apply a new one and put everything back together. This is IF the fan is working properly, sometimes you will also get a lot of dirt on the heatsink you want to blow this out with compressed air since you have everything apart anyway.

In the mean time though you could disable the the following features as a temporary solution till you find time to take it apart:

1. Intel Turbo Boost
2. . Multi threading (Can’t remember the exact name. Forgive me)
3. this should at least stop it from shutting down frequently

Mine is behaving the same and this seems to help