Laptop Screen Issue?

The other day I got so pissed off with Vista I formatted my new Acer 9302 laptop and installed a copy of Windows XP 64-bit. Ever since then whenever I leave the laptop for a long period of time (say 15minutes+), I come back and the screen is all black, as if it has powered down.

I can see the laptop lights still on and moving the mouse the screen lights up, but all there is there now is a slightly lighter black. I have the power settings set to never turn the screen off and to not do anything when I shut the lid but the problem still continues.

The only way I can fix it is by holding down the power button and restarting the laptop. It has only ever done this under Windows XP 64-bit, 32-bit Vista never had these problems.

Any ideas?

:unsure:

sound like your laptop is going into hibernation mode for some reason !
i have acer which behaves similarly - i close the lid whilst on it, then should shut down into standby mode - most of time it will - but sometimes it will start up and the screen will stay black and backlit - which reminders me of the hibernation mode setup !
it's either a reinstall of the OS/bios settings/power settings - even graphics drivers can be temperamental ! i hope it's helpful - it may be useful it maybe not !

I've only just installed XP and got all the 64-bit drivers for everything so it's practically a new laptop which is what leads me to believe it's more of a setting in XP than the laptop itself.

Although the back lit black screen does remind me of hibernation I have this unselected and even if it was hibernating it should come back to life, not just stay on the black screen forever.

Sounds like something is being powered down, and is either not being reactivated or the reactivation code is faulty.

The basic problem is almost certainly a driver error, or wrong driver. Have you installed the driver for the monitor? Remember that for external monitors all you really need to do is set the correct refresh rate and resolution. That may not be the case for a laptop monitor since control of the backlight will be part of the system's powersaving function.

Check your power settings to correct or like lynx said about the video drivers...d/l the drivers off the acer website and reinstall. Good luck and please post what happened...thanks.