[Acer Aspire 5600] Screen randomly turns a solid color when operating on battery power

I've been having the most obnoxious problem with my Acer Aspire for a while now. When it runs on it's AC adapter it's fine, but when I run it on battery power the screen will at a seemingly random point turn a solid color, forcing me to do a hard reboot (and lose everything that wasn't saved). If anyone has any ideas on what the problem could be I'd love to hear them, as I really need to start using this laptop on the go for work. Thanks!

 

How old is your battery? may be dying and you need a new battery.

 

Sounds a bizarre issue.
Can you back the OS up using Acronis or similar, which allows you to play around a try a few things. Or use Acers own backup utility if it allows full disk images.

I would try updating the graphics driver is possible... if device manager says the most current is installed then try and pick a different one from the "show compatible hardware" option...

Is there an option to "roll back" to a previous driver in device manager.

If all that fails then you need to prove if the problem is hardware related or not... and I'm afraid the only option for that is to do a factory reinstall from the hidden partition putting it all back to day one.

Have you made any major changes or installed/updated drivers recently ?

 

My battery came with the laptop, which I purchased in the fall of 2006.

I haven't made any major changes recently, and this problem has been around for about a year. I'm currently changing the VGA driver, I'll test that out and report my findings.