So i have an acer 5100 series. i ran kill disk and the minute it started, the computer shut down. . . now it won't load. boots up for a minute or two and then shuts down again. does anyone have any suggestions??

We need more info, what was wrong to start with, how you ran that utility on what, and what your hoping to achieve ?
My fear currently is that you have corrupted the install, hence not booting, if this has happened you may be up the creek without a paddle.

To explain, systems these days come with the OS etc preloaded, usually in a hidden partition, the details of this are usually hidden so the unknowing user wont be aware, now the registry contains the info the system needs to know where everything is etc, and if that gets corrupted\destroyed then it is all gone, the system wont be able to find it again, at that point disks are the only way to reinstall again.
Now KillDisk is for wiping a hard drive, if you have run this on the OS drive (usually the C Drive) then you have corrupted that system, and the fear is you have wiped the details the system needs to know where the recovery details are, if you have done any of this then you are looking to reinstall probably (given what you've said so far), to do that you need to enter the recovery menu or use system recovery disks if you have any, but if you can give more info we can offer more specific advice.

the computer was running slow and errors were popping up all over. i looked for a recovery area on the computer, couldn't find. all i did with the killdisk was boot up in dos and told to wipe harddrive. it won't even stay on long enought to wipe the entire drive.

i did download the acer recovery yesterday. would that work?

The partition is usually hidden (but not always), thats probably why you didn't see it, and I am concerned running KillDisk may of corrupted the systems ability to know where the recovery partition is, you should not format a drive of a store bought system because it can wipe the hidden partitions, you should simply activate the recovery and return to out of the box status, so we can only hope that running KillDisk didn't destroy anything the system needs to restore itself.

Here is the standard Acer Recovery Instructions, give these a try and if your lucky it will be OK, otherwise the rescue disks are the next thing to try.