My friend's PC was randomly hanging (except during a Spybot S+D scan,it happens every time at various stages) Its 7 years old, A Pentium4 Northwood socket 478mpga. After extensive troubleshooting I discovered the CPU was overheating. It was topping out at 95°C/203°F according to the bios. I removed the heatsink to look at the pad it there was hardly any compound left(a very thin layer). At least going by what I'm used to seeing. I'm used to AMD CPU heatsinks which have a thicker compound pad. A piece of tinfoil held in place with the thermal compound seems pretty shoddy to me. Wouldn't it be better without the pad? It has compound on both sides anyways.
What I wanted to know is, do i need to keep the "Thermal Interface Pad" when I apply the new thermal paste? Here's the heatsink I have. Another thing that worries me is clamping the heatsink back in. First you have clip it in on 4 corners then pull two levers in opposite directions. I'm worried the new paste would get smeared around while I'm doing all that. The person who designed this fastening system is one sadistic bastard.