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Let me preface this by saying the computer is set to never go to sleep.

Update: I found out that a friend of mine has an Acer laptop just like mine and they both have the same problem. It seems Acer added something to their system that might be causing this issue.

Recently I have started having an issue where the screen would go black after sitting idle for too long. The screen-off timer is set for 10 min. After the screen turns off it will not come back on. I can hear sounds when people send messages or when I get notifications but no matter what I do the screen stays black.

I have tried the shortcut to restart the GPU driver Windows key + Ctrl + Shift + B and I can hear the ding but still, the screen stays black. I have removed and re-installed the GPU driver without success. I have even remoted into my computer from another computer, via ConnectWise Control, and the screen is black on there as well. I find this extra strange because it almost implies that it isn't a monitor problem and of course it implies that the computer isn't actually going to sleep. It's just that display is going black. Even without a screen connected I can normally remote into a system and see the desktop.

Edit: As a test, I set the screen to turn off after 1 min. It looks like the computer is auto-locking before the screen goes black and won't come back on. I can't interact with the lock screen in any way and then the computer goes black. I checked the screensaver settings to make sure "On resume, display login screen" wasn't turned on. I can confirm, no screen saver is set nor is that setting turned on.

If I turn off the screen-off feature by setting it to never this doesn't happen. If I lock my screen manually it will allow me to log back in as normal. If the system turns the screen off at any point, because of the screen settings inside the "Power & Sleep" settings it will auto-lock the screen, show the lock screen, go black and never let you turn the screen back on.

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  • It almost sounds like your GPU driver crashes. If you can easily reproduce the problem, can you reproduce it with as few programs open? How about when you boot in safe mode etc? Also, if you don't set any sleep timer, so the screen stays on always, does the problem then go away? Also, did you check the eventlog?
    – LPChip
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 19:23
  • I don't think it is a driver issue. Not only have I already uninstalled and re-installed them but I can hear the system when I trigger the GPU driver restart (Windows key + Ctrl + Shift + B) and still nothing comes up. I don't have a sleep timer but if I do have a screen timer. If I turn off the screen timer the issue stops.
    – Nicholas
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 19:35
  • As I said, I think the driver crashes. As in, gets so upset that even a reinit doesn't work anymore. But it is a really hard issue to solve and will require lots of troubleshooting. So see when it happens and what you can do (other than disabling screen off) to stop it from happening this bad. Safe mode is ideal for that.
    – LPChip
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 20:31
  • The system is auto-locking when the screen turns off. That shouldn't be happening. I checked the screensaver settings and it is not set to lock on resume and I have even change the registry entry for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\238C9FA8-0AAD-41ED-83F4-97BE242C8F20\7bc4a2f9-d8fc-4469-b07b-33eb785aaca0 to 2 as I have seen people say this disables the auto-lock function. None of it stops the computer from auto-locking and when it auto-locks it will not come out of the black screen. If I manually lock it I am able to interact and unlock it normally.
    – Nicholas
    Commented Jul 22, 2021 at 16:23
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    @LPChip thank you for all your help. I did finally find out that it was a BIOS issue.
    – Nicholas
    Commented Jul 26, 2021 at 19:43

1 Answer 1

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It would appear this is a BIOS-related issue on some Acer laptops. There is a BIOS update that fixes the issue. enter image description here

This link is only for the Aspire A515-56 but anyone else experiencing this issue can probably look for their model number and see a BIOS update for fixing the black screen issue. https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/8614?b=1&pn=NX.A1GAA.002

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