Acer Aspire 5551 keeps Freezing. Please help!

Hi there,

I bought an Acer Aspire 5551 that is running on windows 7. I've had it for 2 years without a problem but a few months ago started freezing every so often and I would have to turn it off manually by pressing the "off" button on the keyboard. This freezing problem got more and more frequent and now it freeze within minutes of turning on each time. Unfortunatly it has just gone over its warrenty so I am unable to take it back.

My brother who is far more technical than me descided to reboot it and see if that would fix it which it didn't.He tried rebooting it again and now I can't even get the rebooting sequence to complete without it freezing so now I am stuck on the start up screen!

My brother who is far more technical than me says that he believes it is a hardware problem but he doesn't really know. He says I could take it to a laptop repair shop but they charge £30+ just to have a look at it and I don't want to pay that if they just say that It cannot be fixed or if they tell me that repairs will cost £100+

So I would love to know if anyone else has/is having any problems such as this and if there is a solution?

Thanks for looking anyway and I hope to here from some of you soon!

Jon.