V3-551g Black Screen after sleep/hibernate

I have an Acer v3-551g-x419 that has had the same problem forever. If the computer is on battery power only and I put the computer in to sleep mode with fn F4, close the lid and come back hours later the computer wakes up on hitting the blue power button but has a white screen. If I power it down hard by holding the blue power button and then power it back up I get a black screenbut the laptop loads Windows fine. I know this because I can plug an external monitor and can see Windows fine. I can normally fix it by keeping the external monitor plugged in, plugging in the external power source and rebooting the laptop. I can then get the laptop monitor working like normal until I encounter the dreaded sleep/lid close sequence. Here are all the things I have tried to fix this:

1. loaded bios defaults

2. popped battery, unplug external power source and hold power button for 60 seconds

3. loaded bios version v2.14

4. popped battery off motherboard, as well as battery and external power source to reload bios

5. tried 4 or 5 different catalyst drivers

6. The laptop came with Windows 8 and I upgraded it to 8.1

7. Lastly I wiped the hardrive, installed Windows 7 and downloaded all the windows 7 x64 drivers from Acer(this step leads me to believe it has to be the bios or the acer amd video drivers from their site but if it is the drivers the other catalyst drivers should of fixed it). I am running windows 7 in legacy bios mode so that seems to rule out UEFI issues

8. I have tried hitting about 50 key combinations at both the original white screen and the black screen upon hard boot.

9. I installed Windows 7 a second time and didn't load any drivers from acer. Still acted the same way. Again it makes me think bios or vga firmware.

Any more suggestions that people have? As you can imagine the laptop can't be used as a laptop until I solve this.

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Jlock

A few more facts

10. I loaded vista sp1 on the laptop, did not patch vista and tried replicating it. I only loaded the acer wireless driver. I could not get it to replicate because the fn f4 sleep button would not work and the sleep option was greyed out through vista. So I had no ability to sleep or hibernate.

11. I patched vista and played with the vista power management features and was able to select sleep mode when power button was pushed on battery. I could then replicate the problem but could not replicate the solution of plugging in power and an external monitor. I had to put in a harddrive with Windows 7 on it, start to boot, have it fail because the bios was set to legacy bios mode, and then the laptop screen re-appeared. It is clearly something in either the laptop bios or vga firmware.

Any thoughts or disagreements with my logic?

JackE

The video & cam ribbon cable might either have an intermittent conductor break thru the hinge area or the connectors at the screen and MB need to be re-seated. If you have a habit of opening and closing the lid often, the ribbon is subjected to a lot of repetitive bending stress in the hinge area. You must remove the screen bezel and KB in order to replace the ribbon or re-seat the end connectors. You can google your model for a ribbon cable, usually less than $20, such as http://www.aliexpress.com/item/LCD-Video-Ribbon-Flex-Cable-for-New-Acer-Aspire-V3-551-V3-551G-Q5WV1-dc02c003210/1293126321.html Amazon may also carry them for your machine.

Jack E/NJ

Jlock

Can you share with me your thoughts on why you think it is the cable? I would think if it is the cable I would have problems whenever I open and close the laptop. I can open and close the laptop 10 times and as long as it doesn't go into a prolonged sleep period (not sure exactly how long but in testing I normally use 3 hours as my test mark) the screen display is fine. Thanks for taking the time to help me with this.

JackE

Because your description of the machine's symptoms resembles those I had. I spent literally months trying to fix this issue by many of the techniques you used. It just got progressively worse till the only way I could use the machine was HDMIed or VGAed out to an external TV or monitor. This told me that something other than the bios, OS, drivers or video adaper was amiss.

So I reluctantly bit the bullet, and popped off the not-so-easy to pop-off (due to all the screws and plastic tabs) screen bezel, KB and other nonsense so I could get at all three ends(MB, screen & cam) of the ribbon. First I simply tried to remove and re-insert the connections. Hooked the battery and everything else up without re-assembling and it seemed to work again! So I put everything back together. Re-booted OK and I thought I had resolved the problem. But a few days later, it started happening again. So I pulled it apart again and this time noticed the crammed and tortuous route the ribbon makes through the hinge area --- I booted it to a black screen while apart and started poking at the ribbon around the hinge. The screen briefly lit but washed out! I then immediately checked to see if Amazon had my cable --- it did with free shipping for $18.95!

End of story

Jack E/NJ

PS: I now tap the power button instead of closing the lid when I take a break. In fact, I rarely close the lid anymore unless I'm traveling with the machine.