It turns on, and that's it :-(

Just wanted to confirm a few things..

Did you do a hard power down by holding the power button down for 5 seconds or by just briefly pressing the power button (which would put the computer to Sleep).

I've found this laptop occasionally does not properly recover from Sleeping under Win8, that's why I ask.

Either way, do a hard power down by holding the power button for 5 seconds.

Unplug the laptop and find the battery disconnect pinhole switch underneath (indicated with a picture of a battery lifted up) and using a paperclip press and hold for 30 seconds.

Try powering on again, do you atleast get the Acer logo appearing when powering on?

Let's start from there..

I am having this same problem. I took off the case and pulled the battery to reset the CMOS. That didn't work. The backlit keyboard comes on but that's all. Black when I try to power on. I pulled out the battery and left it out for 5 minutes. Put it back in and nothing. Changed power supply. Nothing. changed outlets. Nothing.

My laptop just shows "Acer exploring beyond limits" that's it doesn't go further than that

@upulasi_st3v3 @dmsosb (and bbspige too, but I can't figure out how to @ him\her): How long have you waited for without it starting up?

Just asking because Aspire V5s, especially older ones, can sometimes take an extremely long time to turn on (my three-year-old V5-122P sometimes takes several minutes to start up), so, if you were waiting only a minute or so and then powered it back down, it's possible (although by no means certain or even probable) that it would have eventually started fully.