[Vlip3]

I know you all are running WM6.5 and I'm still running 6.1 but it doesn't seem anyone is following that thread much anymore. My issue is not (I don't think) related to any particular ROM however.
I've been running the final release of MightyROM 4 since it was released. It has been so rock solid that I've been hesitant to touch anything. Besides, I've been too busy and did not have time to mess with this.
Last week I noticed a significantly shorter battery life one day. The next day, towards the afternoon, I unholstered my phone to find it very hot and the battery almost dead. I charged the phone and everything seemed fine. I had not installed any new software or changed anything in this time. I have a charging dock with spare battery charger I use almost every evening. One morning I uncradled the phone to find it again very hot and the battery indicating only 1%. I removed the battery and installed the one from the charging station. Everything seemed fine that day but the next day I was using Google maps and the phone hung while trying to make a call. I soft reset the phone, started Google maps again and within a few minutes the phone hung again. Same operation and again the phone hung so I shut it off. During the same week I occassionaly would try to use the phone and when I hit the power button, the phone actually booted which means it had shut itself off? Finally, I did a hard reset and restored the phone from backup (Rescoe backup) and it is behaving better but battery life is still much shorter than before - still there are a couple of quirks. I have NuePowerCPL which shows what the current draw is at any point in time and it reports values as high as 284mV. Normally this used to run 60 - 80mV.
I'm going to try a hard reset and fresh re-install of everything next but before I do that, I thought I'd ask - do you all think this is hardware or software related? If it is a hardware issue, I'd rather flash to stock and take it in. But if you all think the ROM may have gotten corrupted over time and a hard reset could fix it, I'll go that route. This may be the push I needed to go WM6.5.
Thanks for all your expert help!
Vlip3