The laptop that I want to use is my old gaming laptop. I built a computer this past April and use it for all of my needs. It runs at 50 Mhash/s which isn't much compared to my computer, but I would like to get it up and running if not to get a better understanding of how things work. I am not too worried about burning out the graphics card.
On that note, does anyone have any advice?
Try to make sure your account details for the mining pool are correct and if you are using an AMD GFx card try to update your drivers to the 13.6 beta.