rgd1101 :
no. don't turn on the laptop without thermal paste. bad thermal paste is better than no thermal paste
That's incorrect. Bad thermal paste is worse than no thermal paste. The vast majority of the heat transfer from the CPU to the heatsink is via metal-on-metal contact. With no thermal paste, the metal-on-metal contact is still there, you just have a lot of air gaps with poor thermal conductivity.
A bad paste job (too much paste) gets rid of the air gaps, but it also gets rid of the metal-on-metal contact. So a bad paste job can do a lot more harm than it does good.
Your CPU will run hotter without paste than with, but it will still run.
http

/www.hardwaresecrets.com/thermal-compound-roundup-february-2012/5/
All modern CPUs...