Hello I am having this problem as well with my Acer Travelmate 5610. It came with Vista but XP is supported according to Acer. I did a clean install with XP. Everything is fine on start, WindowsXP logo with moving bar works. When this finishes, however, the screen goes black. Same happens with external display.
WinXp is installed. If I press the power button the hdd activity light flashes and a few seconds later the laptop shuts off. I also was able to update my BIOS blindly with a usb flash drive which was tricky, but it shows the updated version in BIOS.
I'm assuming this is a driver issue but it's weird. Resolution is set to 640X480 at 16 colors with 60hz to have it the lowest settings possible. I'm a very saaaad panda right now.
I tried above fix. No such thing as "fixntldr" or fixntdlr as suggested with no luck. Any suggestions? Thank you!