This is exactly how it started with my laptop. First it started to hang every now and then later number of "hangs" started to raise and finally it just refused to boot.

If you google for it you'll see this is very common failure for these laptops. I think cooling system efficiency degrades with time (dust etc.). Combined with material weaknesses for some Nvidia chips and voila ! System fried...

My laptop was affected by this. It uses Nvidia GPU+Turion. HP did extend warranty for certain models/serial number range and they have fixed this for free (although I specifically asked about extended warranty for this model and I doubt I would get it otherwise)

What I have noticed is motherboard revision changed after laptop was returned to me. Original laptop used Apollo rev1 (which I guess is mobo code-name?) the new one had rev5

Ashley - IMHO you completely missed the point . This is about fair CHOICE.

Third party tools should have same access to underlaying OS functions as Microsoft does !