Update on the seeming Acer doorstop.
Last night after arriving home I decided to try a few things to get the piece of !!!! running. Removed the battery, unplugged it from the power adapter and then held the power key for 30 seconds. Put the battery back in, attached the power adapter and, voila, nothing. Power key is still glowing blue and with the battery back in the batter LED is also glowing blue.
Opened it up and reseated both RAM modules as well as the hard drive. Cleaned up the fan which was slightly dusty but not too bad. Tried powering it up again and, voila, nothing.
Needless to say, I have tried everything I can think of to get the laptop up and running again, all to no avail. However, I think it's time to call it a day with this Acer junk box.
For the 2 years I had it running it really was a nice laptop. The 17" screen has a very sharp resolution and the Intel Core Duo was spunky. However, I think I'm going to give Acer a pass in the future. For a laptop, or any machine for that matter, to go belly up after 2 years is unacceptable in my view. I've had Dells which have run well over 10 years as well as 1 or 2 HP laptops which were dogs but at least had longevity.
Lesson learned.