Acer Aspire One ZG5 shuts off at startup.

Hey everyone.
Quick background: My dad just returned from Afghanistan and is home for a few weeks before he heads back (by home I mean with my mother - i.e. I am not with them so I cannot get my hands on the computer).
He's been using his netbook (Acer Aspire One ZG5) while over there and brought it back with him. It's been working perfectly fine for the last 6 months while he was there, but today when he tried to turn it on to show some pictures to my mom it wouldn't.

The computer would start up fine and begin loading windows. Then it just dies - it just shuts itself off.
The next time, the computer gave them the option to turn it on in safe mode which they tried. Same problem.
They've tried several times and it won't start - it also fails at different times. Sometimes it almost fully loads windows and other times it shuts off a lot sooner.

I made him open the BIOS which worked fine... for a few seconds and then randomly shut itself off again.

This sounds like a hardware problem to me but I'm really not sure what it could be. Any ideas?
Thank you.

 

Try this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=416995

 

How exactly does freezing it recalibrate the built-in thermal sensor
And what causes the built-in sensor to need recalibration like that?

I'll tell my dad to try this when I call him later on. Hopefully it works.

 

Dunno. It's one of those empirical hacks

 

Where did you find out about this?
I tried looking it up on google and can't find anything about sticking a netbook/notebook in a freezer.

 

The best place for Acer netbook info is here:
www.aspireoneuser.com/forum