Nope this is an issue of break down of the lad itself....bad manufacturing
That's what I thought at first, too. But a well-buggered driver could produce that effect, too.
The part of the description that scared me was about how mechanical changes would cause it to go away for a while, but it would return. That doesn't normally happen with purely software problems.
I dunno... sure glad I'm not on the Engineering team at MS for this one.