Laptop Freezes Randomly. Help Please!

Hi,

Before I begin, I must point out I'm not tech savvy and that will become apparent in the post.

I have the must frustrating issue with mt acer laptop. Randomly, and for no apparent reason it keeps freezing. The only way out is to power off then on again. It might not happen for a few days but sometimes more than once a day. The thing is a 'black box' flashed up on screen a few times but was gone before I had chance to read it. I presume this was some sort of error/fault report? I've never been able to access anything which tells me what the issue is. I have the inbuilt antivirus turned off and AVG free unstalled. I also have Malwarebytes and spybot (both free) Rather than an issue with software, when the 'black box' I mentioned popped up I think it said there was a hardware issue but I'm not 100% certain.

I unplugged all peripherals just in case that was the problem but to no avail. I was listening music the other day and had not touched anything on the laptop when it froze.

It's really starting to grate so if anyone has any suggestions what the issue may be, how I can find out via the system or, better still, rectify it, then I'd be most grateful.

Thanks in advance for any replies.