After much searching on the internet for the below issues, there is actually a known issue with quite a few laptops made by HP in which they eventually roast themselves to death.  A BIOS patch to combat this was released not so long ago, but for most this may have already been too late.

Anyway, in their defense, they are replacing the motherboard in all defective laptops for free, or at least that’s what I’m led to believe.  We’ll see what happens when I phone them…