Since then, I've noticed a significant drop in my battery life of my laptop when unplugged. I've been meaning to go get it fixed, but as it seemed like a relatively minor issue with the backlight, I've been putting it off (I need this laptop for university!).
Today however, it's been developing a new issue - irregular freezing. When it does this, the mouse pointer freezes and the keyboard doesnt work, and Ctrl+Alt+Delete doesnt work. The laptop normally runs fine for a couple of hours and then freezes out of the blue. I'm really concerned because I have no money to get it fixed right now, and I need this laptop for a big, lengthy, time consuming final year media degree project for the next 3 months or so. I ran an antivirus scan (I use the free version of Avast) and it turned up nothing. I don't really know what else to do - the issues don't happen on startup, theres no program that causes it as far as I can tell (it could be google chrome, because thats generally always open) and I cant see anything that suggests what it could be.
Does anyone have any ideas what could be causing these problems? It seems unlikely, but might they be connected in any way? It's really worrying, I'm kinda relying on this computer - not having access to it could potentially mean the difference between passing university with a 1st (the best grade) or a 3rd (the worst one thats not a complete fail).
So annoying

