Some laptops, mostly ones that had the Nvidia 6150 GO GPU have issues overheating... The heatsink design allowed a 2.3mm gap, around the thickness of a penny, to be between the GPU and heatsink, there is talk of a class action lawsuit over it, and it affects a large portion of there laptops, mostly the DV2xxx, 3xxx, 4xxx, 6xxx, and 9xxx series.
But, yea, a power adapter, when they go, sometimes its like the PSU in a PC, it can take out the hard ware with it.
I just serviced one over the last week, GPU would idle around 102C, put a CLEAN penny that I ended up lapping with some thermal paste on it, dropped the temp around 30-40C, though, it still runs hot.
I can recall a few topics on an HP forum where people actualy had to go to the ER over severe burns from the exhaust heat being so hot.
BTW, see if her laptop it self, is also eligible for a warranty extension, I think it's only like a year.
Here is one of the pages on the "enhancments" to the warranty, I found a few other things, I will keep poking around to see if hers is recalled or has an extension.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01087277&lc=en&cc=us