Gopro freezes when pressing record button

my gopro hero 3+ silver works fine, I can navigate through menus, look through LCD bakpak but when I go to take a video or picture (regardless of quality) the entire camera freezes and sometimes the LCD goes black. I was using a lexar 633x card and bought a sandisk extreme card and it hasnt helped. Also have updated to latest firmware as well as tried to downgrade back to 2.0 and neither helped. Im thinking it is the Image Sensor as everyone is saying, however I dont want to drop $17 after shipping on something that isnt the problem. does anyone know what might be wrong?