Standby Problem - Acer 5050 Laptop

Hi, I was wondering if anyone could advise me about this strange problem.

My almost 1 year old Aspire 5050 is having some strange issues regarding not being able to save power options settings.

In short, when I set the power options to "do nothing when lid is closed" it will instead go into Standby.

The problem is very erratic and it seems to happen at random. Sometimes, it follows the power options I set manually and will not power down, but usually after being on for an hour or more and I close the lid, it goes into standby. Also, after being off for a few hours, then being turned on and the lid is closed, it usually goes into standby

I believe the problem started around the time I downloaded the newest bios from Acer's website for my model. The bios had the peculiar addition of (Vista) next to it. I thought to myself, since when was a bios specific to OS? maybe this version will have more options. I tried reverting back by using the backup BIOS file the utility made, but the problem persists. I suppose if I can't fix it myself, I will take my chances with acer service and hope they fix it before the warranty goes out in a month.

I've also formatted and clean installed XP, to no avail.

Specifics: Acer Aspire 5050-3465
2.0 ghz Turion MK-36 cpu
ATi 1100 xpress chipset
1.5GB ram
80gb hd


any help would be appreciated!