Once I turned it off again and removed the DVD I got the fatal message error, OPERATING SYSTEM NOT FOUND. The computer rebooted and I could use the DVD, no problem. I accessed the BIOS menu as described above (not F2), then disabled safeboot and enabled legacy boot support and changed the order to be able to boot from CD, as I wanted to boot the computer with a live Linux DVD. Today I was fixing a laptop with windows 10. So if the computer doesn't boot into the HDD because of a miss-configuration of the BIOS, no luck for you.
The BIOS on that laptop can only be called from Windows 8 or 10 (not 8.1), by restarting in recovery mode (aka safe mode) by holding the shift key when hitting restart on windows. Acer Aspire V5 will not display BIOS menu, no matter how many times you press F2, or whether you remove the HDD or whatever you try.
