Unexpected standby mode, mostly activated on dark screen like on PC BIOS setup screen, sometimes on Windows desktop too, feels like initiated by some partial dark on the screen video signal. afterwards you have to switch off and on, that helps mostly for three seconds, sometimes for more. if the monitor was switched off longer like one hour, it can work properly for several hours. the whole effect does not happen on all PC hardware.

Immediately after pressing the power up button, start repeatedly pressing F2 while the Acer logo is displaying. The Bios setup screen should appear. If you press F2 too soon, the keyboard may not have initialized yet. If you press it too late, Windows will proceed to launch. Press it once, wait a second, press, it again, wait another second, and repeat this while the Acer logo is displaying until you see the bios setup screen.

This is standard approach with most Acers. That said, some laptops may defer to either Ff being the key to press or CTRL+ALT+EXC. Such would be entered as the above mentioned F2. Your Aspire appears to be a desktop and I suspect F2 will suffice.

usb or ps2 keyboard ? might need to be enabled in BIOS

If you want to use a USB keyboard to access Windows command prompt options, make changes in the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System), or to operate legacy operating systems, you must enable support for the device inside the BIOS.

Shut down the computer and disconnect the USB keyboard. Connect a PS/2 keyboard to the PS/2 connector port on the rear of the computer. Turn on the computer and press the "Delete" key several times as soon as you see the initial boot or company logo screen. Wait for the main BIOS setup screen to appear. Press the right or left arrow keys to move the cursor to the "Advanced" or "Advanced Settings" menu option. Press the "Enter" key. Move the cursor to the "Integrated Peripherals" or "Peripheral Configuration" menu option. Press the "Enter" key. Press the down-arrow key to navigate to the "USB Controllers" option. Press the "+" or "-" key to change the menu option to "Enabled." Move the cursor to the "USB Legacy Support" or "USB Legacy Function" field. Press the "+" key repeatedly until the value option changes to "Enabled." Press the "F10" key to save changes to the BIOS settings and exit the setup utility. Wait until the computer begins to restart and then press the power button and hold it for approximately four or five seconds. The computer shuts down completely. Unplug the PS/2 keyboard from the computer and set it aside. Reconnect the USB keyboard restart the computer. As soon as you see the initial boot screen, tap the "Delete" key several times and wait for the BIOS setup screen to appear. If you are able to access the BIOS setup screen with the USB keyboard, USB support is active in the BIOS.

Start your machine and enter bios setup by pressing the DEL key at the Emachine logo, but before windows startup. Find the option to restore factory defaults and then exit or escape and select save changes. After restarting and windows starts, if this is something recent, you might fix this if the bios reste doesn't work, byt doing a restore to an earlier system checkpoint. Also check your power settings. Right click on your desktop away from any icons and ct properties in WINXP or personalize in Vista. Click the button labled Power under the screensaver tab. Check the power standby settings and set them according to your preferences. Hopefully these will correct the problem. If so, please don't forget to provide a rating. Anything less than four thumbs up is negative towards an overall rating by the way and means your problem was not resolved, but rate this (or not) accordingly. Good luck!

Hopefully you didn't snag a BIOS virus (normally loaded on when doing a BIOS upgrade and that file having been pre-infected), but not really a common problem.

The most tedious way to get this figured out is to take every item imaginable off of the motherboard and one by one start replacing all the peripherals. Before anything I would clear the cmos (usually take the silver button cell battery out for about 10 minutes and put it back in) as "the" first step.

Then without even thinking about going into the bios, just start trying to get the computer to POST past the initial logo screen. More times than not, clearing the cmos puts the computer back to a default setting that will at least get you up and running.

Barring that the keyboard isn't the singular culprit to your woes, you should get back to a windows start screen (NOT necessarily getting into your windows desktop). If you get that far, then you have jumped the first hurdle. Reboot your machine and go into your bios, do nothing other than reset your time and date as this will (sometime) cause windows to balk at loading because its own time stamp doesn't match what the bios is reporting, thus it thinks you have relocated the drive to a new computer (how dare we re-use software on a computer we own).

Once that is done, you 'should' be able to get back into windows and make changes that you need, not to mention getting the rest of your peripherals up and running.

Hope this helped...

Boot into safe mode. From another computer download malwarebytes free version. www.malwarebytes.org
Save to usb it will show up as MBAM.exe
Rename MBAM.exe to winlogon.exe.
Boot to safe mode, send winlogon.exe to desktop (create shortcut)
Install, update, and run full scan. delete everything it finds.
Hope it helps

What virus scanner do you use and when did you scan last? Your description sounds like the hard drive is failing but without more information no one can say for sure.

Next step is remove hard drive and see if it is recognized in another computer. The Hard Drive could just be bad, but you need to rule out the motherboard drive controllers that could also be bad. Also try a known good drive in your system.

Char S.

In the control panel, go to performance and maintenance then click power options. Or, right click the desktop and select the screen saver tab, then click the power button. If the hibernate tab is missing, either your hardware does not support standby/hibernation mode, or it is disabled in the BIOS. If the hibernate tab is available, click Enable hibernation to do you know what.

There might be a bios setting that you have too set for the recovery mode. If you can get into the BIOS then check to see if there's a setting for recovery. You can also try at boot up (before the Windows error) to hit Ctrl-F10.

Check the display cables , and if you have one test a different monitor on your computer.

If this is not a sceen problem, then it is an internal fault possibly the motherboard.

Try first leaving the PC power cord unplugged for ten, fifteen minutes and check if PC restarts afterwards.