fred, that brings me to 'system recovery options' I've seen this screen before and none of the options worked.
It has:
startup repair - didnt work
windows complete pc restore - i dont have a back up
windows memory diagnostic tool - didnt work
command prompt - don't know how to use this
recovery management powered by acer - using this as a last resort as i don't want to lose my files.
The other option is system restore (which half the time a box comes up saying it is already running) but when it does work it lets me pick an earlier date and then tells me to enter a disk for PQSERVICE (X

- i never got any disks when i bought the computer and i dont know what going forward without this disk would do?