Acer X241W monitor "No Signal"

Question

I have an Acer X241W LCD monitor on a Vista 32 OS. I have had this monitor for 1 year and I have a persistant problem. I continually get an unmovable "NO SIGNAL" message on my monitor even tho I can still  work behind the message.  A few seconds later the screen goes black and then comes back on without the message, but a couple of minutes later the message pops up again and continues as stated above. Until I shut down my pc and unplug the monitor from power. Then it could go a week to a month before this occurs again. This is a common problem with this monitor (just google Acer X241W no signal). This is not pc specific, because I have had this monitor on 2 different pcs one an XP OS and currently Vista 32 (brand new pc). I called Best Buy where I purchased the monitor (as well as the 4 year warranty) and asked if they had heard of the problem. They replied that they have, and that it was an Acer defect and was unfixable. So I asked if I could bring it in and exchange for a similar monitor and pay the difference. I was told I would have to bring my monitor in and they would send it off to be serviced. Why service it if it is unfixable? What have you (Geek Squad City) done to fix this monitor? I know that you have had this problem before, so surely I can get a real answer. I cannot see why I should have to ship off my monitor and wait without my pc for up to 1 month, for you to service a monitor that you know you can not fix.

Answer 1

I have the same problem. Bought mine in April of "07". I'm running a home-built PC with an Intel "Work Station" mother board, an ATI radion X1300 video card and using Windows XP, SP-3.
It worked fine for over a year, then the "no signal" problem started. I just lived with it for several months until the monitor finally "died".
Took it into Best Buy for repairs. They had it for 29-days and replaced a "fried" power supply and also replaced the main board. Got it back and everything worked fine for about 4-weeks, then problem returned. Back to the shop! Another 2-weeks in the shop and another new controller board. Got it back and it worked OK for about 7-days, then problem returned.
I was very unhappy at this point, so I took it back and asked them to replace it or give me a credit toward a new monitor. No luck, but they took it back to the service dept again. They said it worked fine, no problem found, could not reproduce the problem and just returned it to me.
Interesting note: Whenever the monitor was in the shop, I used a Gateway 17" LCD monitor, with the same HDMI cable and video card and it never had this problem, so it suggests that the problem is in the Acer monitor, not my computer!
Brought it home and had the same problem in about 4-hours! I think I have tried everything. I updated my video card driver. Disabled "sleep" mode for the monitor. Uninstalled a monitor color calibration software package.
I have observed one interesting fact about this problem. The problem happens after the computer restarts (mine is always on, but after a Windows auto-update it reboots). If I cycle the monitor off for about a minute and then turn it back on, it will run fine, sometimes for days or weeks, until the computer is restarted.
So I did some web searching and found a lot of other people reporting this same problem. One interesting discovery was an Acer Field Service Bulletin from 9/17/07, updated 4/3/08, reporting on this problem and suggesting a "main-board firmware update" (which can only be performed in an approved repair center) that "may" fix the problem. The correct update depends on the display serial number. This was reported on "fixya.com"'s web site on 6/7/08.
It looks like Best Buy's repair center must not know about this, or are just not being very helpful. I'm very unhappy with their so-called "customer service" at this point.
What I would like to know is if ANYONE had actually gotten the problem fixed?