Don,
I had a Dell computer do the same thing a few years back. I
turned it over to a Dell tech at the University where I worked and he
fiddled with it for 3 days. After a while, he got ticked off and
played the hunch of replacing the motherboard and all was well. I
don't know if the motherboard issue is the same for your situation.
If you have the ability to boot off CD on the Acer Aspire, I would run
Memtest 86+ to see if the ram memory might be a factor here. I want
to say it won't, but then again ram is cheaper to replace than some
motherboards.
http://www.memtest.org/
just my two cents,
Derek Buchanan
The NOSPIN Group is now offering Free PC Tech
support at our newest website:
http://freepctech.com