You get the award on this one.

Temperature is a variable on the issue, but not the primary problem.

Dell did some diagnostics with it and found the hard drive is slowly departing this earth. New drive is on the way.

As I write this, the machine is in safe mode and currently backing up "my documents" to an external drive (I'm not on it at the moment). It'll probably take 8 hours to get it done...........if it doesn't crash.

I've got the a/c on maximum cold to help it as best as I can.