I have to cycle my LCD monitor's power on and off to get it to stay on
Solution 1:
First off, AndrejaKo's answer is incorrect - it is INDEED cheaper to replace the capacitors and to buy them. I recently bought a kit of capacitors for a customer's LCD. In fact, several sites on the Internet show you the user how to repair a LCD monitor yourself - all you need is some capacitors, solder, and soldering gun, and a putty knife and a exacto blade and a Phillips screwdriver. A kit will run you $13 on eBay - just type in the name of your model of your LCD and look them up - most supply capacitors and solder - you just have to have the rest.
Generally the only capacitors you need to replace are the ones on the power supply on the back of the case of the LCD - it's not hard to do. Also as costs and repairs have changed - if you didn't want to do this - it would run you $30 for someone to repair them - so whoever says it's costly hasn't seen the price for a new LCD - they are still more pricy than repairing your current one - and most LCD monitors are shipped with capacitors that last only a few years - but it's not hard to find capacitors that will last you many more years.
Take it from a tech who knows - not someone who assumes.
Solution 2:
Issues such as this one are usually caused by bad electrolytic capacitors used inside the monitor. With time they lose their capacitance and their equivalent series resistance (ESR) increases. Such problems are common in computer power supplies, but it can happen on anything that uses electrolytic capacitors.
The several restarts are required because as the capacitors age, more time is required for them to charge and when the screen is restarted several times in succession, they don't have enough time to discharge while the screen is off, so the stored amount of charge increases with each restart.
The electrolytic capacitors are often used with voltage regulators and that could explain the restarts. The monitor will usually have pre-programmed amount of time in which the regulator output must stabilize. If it doesn't safeties will kick in and turn it off. Once the amount of charge in the capacitors is enough for the regulators to work correctly, the screen will stop turning off and will work more or less normally.
The solution to this problem isn't very easy and probably not very cheap. You (or a repairman) will have to locate the failing capacitors and replace them, hopefully with capacitors of higher quality.
Another option is to trash the monitor and get a new one. Depending on the costs of repairs, this could turn out to be a cheaper option than fixing the monitor, if you don't know how to replace the capacitors yourself.
Solution 3:
It sounds like a monitor issue, but here are a few things to try:
Confirm your video card is working. If your video card is not sending a signal to the monitor, it will turn on for a few seconds, then go to sleep. Do you see your desktop (or anything other than a black screen) when you power cycle the monitor?
Change video inputs. It could be the port on the video card and/or monitor is going bad.
Get a new DVI Cable. A quick google search found people with a lot of issues with the X241W. One fix was to get a new DVI cable if you are running resolutions beyond 1920 X 1080. The one supplied is a single-link DVI and to run higher resolutions you'll need a dual-link DVI cable. http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/611883-lcd-monitor-standby-problem-2.html
Solution 4:
Before you trash the monitor or even open it up to repair it be sure to check the warranty on the unit. Acer monitors have a 3 year warranty from date of purchase that covers parts and labor. If you can't find your receipt then check the mfg date on the label on the back of the monitor, if it's within the 3 year warranty then contact http://www.acer.com to have the unit serviced.