Q:

Troubleshooting - Acer Aspire 5612WLMi - Just Dies Randomly/Laptop broken

I'm trying to help a friend with his laptop - it just started dying randomly - many times not even starting. 
Sometimes it boots into Windows and then dies, sometimes it just doesn't even start and load BIOS. I tried using an Ultimate Boot Disk version and tried to run some tests, but have no idea what I'm doing.
Any help on trying to figure this out is appreciated - we called Acer, but apparently we have to pay $199 before we can get help, with no guarantees :P
Link to Laptop Specs - http://www.acerdirect.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_5612_WLMi_Laptop_LX.AFY0J.019/version.asp

A:

How hot does the laptop get? It's possible that it is overheating and there is a panic temperature that forces an immediate shutdown. When it has been sitting for a while (turned off) does it always boot past the BIOS?
This definitely looks like a heat issue. That is the only thing that makes sense why it would boot past the BIOS only sometimes. What happens is while it is in windows the processor hits the critical temp and shuts down. Then when you try to turn it back on it is still at this critical level and panics again, therefore bailing out before the BIOS has a chance to initialize completely.

