VPU recovery pop up suggests that the card is overheating and crashing. You should look into that first, try running games or something 3D with the case open and see if it still crashes. So based on this information, it seems your friend is having a hardware and not a software problem.
ps. There was problems with VPU recovery not working right in the past, but if you have more reacent drivers, say 6.5+ it should not be an issue.