Asus x83vB POST freeze after failed DVD write

I don't really know which forum to post this in, so I'll leave this here for now.

So I found a creative way to f**k up my computer.

First, specs: don't have every number in existence off hand, but it's a stock (I think) refurbished Asus X83vB. Only thing that should be different is a Seagate 320 GB hdd and Windows 7 Ultimate unless the refurbisher is lying to me. No overclocking.

Anyways, I was burning some documents to DVD. I used ImgBurn (it plays well with DAEMON Tools lite), started the burn at 1x, left for beer o'clock, came back 15 minutes later, and it was stuck on 6% where I left it, the laptop was overheating terribly, completely frozen, and I couldn't get the disk tray to eject (even the hard eject pinhole did nothing)... so I did a hard reset.

Probably the dumbest thing I could've done, I know. So now when I turn my computer on, it freezes at POST. If I spam the boot menu or setup menu buttons, I can read the post dialogue, and it freezes at "initializing USB controllers". It won't go to any menus. The DVD drive sounds crippled, like it won't spin up right. And I have no idea what to do. I was in the middle of backing up 5 years of work ;_;

Things I've tried:
boot with the DVD I was burning
no DVD
bootable DVD (ubuntu)
going on battery and plugged in, each with the three DVD steps (it doesn't allow plug but no battery)
leaving it unplugged and without battery for a couple of minutes and trying everything again

thinkum-dinkum no boot wat do?

So this morning my computer just came back on. Now, I trust this less than I trust it still being inoperable, because computers don't do things randomly. So while I can't necessarily try your method now, I would like to see if we can figure out what happened so I can prevent it from happening in the future.

Chkdsk only found about the same amount of crap as it does from any other improper shutdown. Memtest ran fine.

My thermal paste is coming a bit loose from my graphics card (yay non-integrated, boo no standardization amongst laptop graphics cards) and it's idling at about 65 degrees. I was thinking of getting a liquid metal thermal paste. Though everything else is in the low 40s and I don't know how a warm graphics card would affect DVD burning.

At any rate, this afternoon I had a thought and tried another of the same brand of DVD-Rs I used to burn my files with, and it froze up again; this time I killed it with the process manager before the whole OS froze. I was using a custom timestamp for the DVD set to the creation date of an important folder. I tried it again with another brand of DVD and with no custom timestamp and it burned fine.

I know I conflated the variables of dvd model and timestamps, but do either of you know if these have been a problem with ImgBurn or Windows 7?

I found an old backup disk from when I first got the computer and did a clean format of my hard drive. I reinstalled only a few things, got the latest drivers and W7 updates, and it's still stopping at POST. Only now if I let it sit there for about 5 or 10 minutes or wait a few and open and close the DVD drive, it boots.

Also, the dual cores and hard drive were running at about 50 C and the GPU core at about 70 C idle, and after the wipe they're all down to 32 C idling. So I must have just half-burned out something on the mobo after having some software run the system hard. Burned a DVD of the same model as the one that made it freeze, and it burned fine.

So I'm just going to chalk this up to overheating on a crap refurb and call it case closed. Dang laptop has patched over buckshot shrapnel holes in the bottom anyways, I knew what I was buying. I'll have to replace it soon.