Acer Aspire 5630 Crashing/Beeping/Hinge Problems

Firstly sorry for the length of this, I'm just trying to get as much detail in as possible.

I've had my Acer Aspire 5630 laptop, running Vista, for around 2 1/2 years, without trouble until four nights ago. While moving/re-angling it on my bed, it beeped and appeared to instantly crash. Thought this might be over-heating, so left it.

On Monday evening (3 nights ago) after getting back from work, I tried it again for the first time, and it loaded up without problem. However while repositioning it on my desk, the same happenend as the previous night; beeps and then a black screen. The power light was still on, and the DVD drive seemed to react to being opened and closed as it would do normally when checking for a disc. Apart from that nothing else would work, and I had to hold down the power button for a few seconds to turn it off.

I sat the laptop on its side while open in case it was an over-heating problem, and tried it without the battery in. From this position I was able to boot the machine back up in safe mode, and run a series of virus/spyware scans, and a memory diagnostic test (all clean). Once this was complete the laptop restarted itself and booted normally (not in safe mode). Everything then seemed okay for a short while. Due to problems I was now having with running updates on the laptop (which turned out to be a clock sync error) I was trying to search for solutions on my old desktop, which meant opening and closing the lid a few times to see the LCD monitor behind it. While I was doing this, the same beeping and black screen happened again.

This led me to think it was the movement of the lid that was causing the problems. Upon closer inspection, I found one of the corners next to the hinge was 'loose'. I've taken some photos and a video to show you what I mean, and show what happens when the lid is moving.

Images (large!): Image 1, Image 2

Video: YouTube - Laptop Problems

I've worked out why this is happening. The piece of metal or plastic on the bottom of the case (as you look at it in the photos above) that the screw goes through before screwing into the top part, has broken away. See ridiculous diagram below of how it should look (left) and how it does look (right). This means the screw is only screwed into the top part; there's nothing pulling the two halves of the case together to close the gap seen in the photos.

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I reasoned that as long as I kept the lid in a fixed position once open, that this might stop the problem. The rest of the night I had no problems doing this. Then two nights ago, without moving the laptop or lid at all, I had the following issues, in order:

• Laptop crashed/died after about 30 minutes of use, screen went black, but with no beeping this time. This may not be the first time I've had no beeps.
  
• Screen froze 10 minutes after starting again. Screen stayed on, which is the first time this has happened. No beeps.
  
• 'Usual' crash happened around an hour later; black screen and beepings.

This time I made a note of the beeps; 1 long, 2 short. However it appears that I have a Phoenix bios, and this beep code doesn't match any I've been able to find online. Infact, it doesn't even sound like enough beeps to register as a code for the Phoenix bios.

Turned laptop on last night, left it alone for half an hour. Within 2 minutes of me web browsing on it, it reset itself (first time it's done this). It got as far as the Vista loading screen before crashing properly (1 long, 2 short beeps + black screen). I turned it off and back on again, and got the beeps again immediately and then again 10 seconds or so later. Screen still black.

Restarted it again and Windows activated the start-up recovery tool, and I chose to restore the system to a previous 'safe' copy (which was from sometime last week). I then left the laptop alone for 2 hours, and it was still fine. I was then able to web browse, IM and update iTunes for around half an hour before it crashed again (beeps + black screen) just as I hit 'enter' during an IM conversation.

Again, I restarted and began backing up some files to an external drive. Left this going over-night, and laptop was still on come this morning. I coped a few more files over, and went to shut the laptop down. As soon as I'd closed the Windows Explorer window, and the desktop was shown, the laptop crashed again (beeps + black screen).

And that's where I'm up to. Any help would be greatly appreciated, I really am pretty stuck here... I need the laptop incase I need to work from home (web designer). Any ideas or thought appreciated... i'm now leaning towards it being a video error based on other BIOS beep codes?

Congrats if you got down to the bottom!

 

To add to the above, it appears that any substantial pressure on the keyboard/mousepad and surrounding areas causes a crash. I've just tested pushing down (not too hard) on the areas either side of the mousepad, and it triggers a crash everytime.