I am having similar issues with my own VGC-JS1E which is also only 16 months old.
Several months ago the computer would once in a while randomly freeze. Notably, these freezes would be accompanied by a loss of power to USB devices (laser light on mouse off) and a complete suspension of activity by the hard-drive. A hard-power off was the only solution.
Over time, I have noticed this problem slowly getting more frequent. Interestingly, it also worsened - I found that if I tried to restart my machine immediately after once of these incidents then it would behave exactly as the original poster has described, the power light would come on, the fans would start up (at MAX speed, interestingly) but nothing further. If I left my machine turned off it would usually start-up after an hour or so. Just in the last few days the situation has deteriorated such that I can barely use my computer for any significant period of time - assuming it boots up - and it is fast becoming unusable.
Given the worsening of the problem, and the 'cool-down' period that seems to allow operations to continue, I wondered as to the possible cause. Could this be a CPU overheat? If so why does it frequently not even get as far as loading the bios, with the fans screaming just a few seconds after power on? Hard-disk problems? Ive not run checkdisk but theres no dodgy sound from the HDD and when the machine does boot up properly I can access files all fine. Power or USB problems? Windows Vista software or driver problems?
Im considering a clean install of Windows 7 to see if that helps?
Any insight would be most gratefully received, by myself, the OP and no doubt other owners of the VGC-JS1 who might be encountering similar issues any time soon...
All very disappointing for a computer just out of warranty! 
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