Sunday 2 October 2011

Acer timeline not booting up

Came back from Shorinji Kempo training from the Gold Coast around 6:30 pm and booted up my Acer to type in some study notes for my Prince2: Project Management subject. Computer will not boot despite attempting ecovery.
Inserted, the Linux Mint Live DVD to check out the hard-drive and to recover my data as well as getting a snapshot of my hard-drive partition before reformatting and re-installing. My harddrive partition was as follows:


The notes for the previous configuration is as follows:

/************  Begin Multiboot PC Notes  ************/
Proposed new 'puter set-up
Windows 7
- Because it's there.
- 100GB Disk Space ==============================================================

http://wiki.daviddarts.com/Ubuntu_Natty_on_the_Acer_TimelineX_3820T

Acer Aspire TimelineX 5820T Notes:
The first thing you'll want to do is access the computer's BIOS and activate the F12 Boot Menu option. Start your computer and press F2 to enter the BIOS. Navigate to: Main > F12 Boot Menu and toggle "Enabled". Then navigate to the Boot Menu and select the DVD drive (IDE1: MatshitaDVD-RAM UJ892AS) and press F6 to move it up the list. Press F10 to save and Exit.

Assuming your Acer 3820T is running Windows 7 and you plan to dual boot, you'll first need to partition your HDD. I recommend using GParted which comes pre-installed on the Live version of Ubuntu.

NOTE: Once you have resized the partition, be sure to boot into Windows (2X) before proceeding with the installation. This will allow Windows to automatically rescan the newly-resized partition and write changes to its own bootloader configuration files. If you skip this step, the Windows bootloader will not be able to read the partition table properly and will not boot entirely. If this happens, you may later have to repair the Windows partition bootup files manually using the Windows Recovery Console.


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http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1748430

Re: Fedora 15, Ubuntu 11.04 and GRUB
At the very end of the Fedora installation there is a check list right before you start the install. One option is something like: Boot Manager. The easiest way is to select this then choose DO NOT INSTALL BOOT MANAGER (it will give you a warning-just ignore it and proceed). The you will GRUB from Ubuntu and will boot into Ubuntu's Plymouth screen. Once you are back in Ubuntu open a terminal an type: sudo update-grub. When you reboot you will be given the option of booting into Fedora or Ubuntu.

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install without boot partition
Fedora 15 (bleeding edge and Gnome 3)
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1225972
- use for asm programming
- rpm and yum
- /boot 250MB + / 3-5GB + Shared Swap Space
- Changed to 10GB as not enough disk space for BT to copy files over
Getting wireless to work
- su -> lsusb -> lspci -> Broadcom BCM43255 802.11b/g/n
  then follow these instructions:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=246320

- gstreamer 'ugly' for lame-mp3 encoding

==============================================================


Gentoo (self compile ports)
- Learning software developement
- Uses ports system
install: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/
System Requirements
- 1.5GB Disk Space (5GB is more than enough) + Shared Swap Space

replaced with Sabayon 5.5

==============================================================

Bodhi (10.04 Ubuntu based with E17)
- Tinker with Desktop and configuration
- 1.5GB Disk Space (5GB is more than enough) + Shared Swap Space
- Changed to 10GB as not enough disk space for BT to copy files over
Getting wireless to work lspci gives the wrong model of wlan card - Gave up try Sabayon 5.5


==============================================================

Backtrack (Ubuntu KDE based security kit)
http://www.backtrack-linux.org/wiki/index.php/Downloading
- Learning security
System Requirements
- 700 MB or 2700 MB of Hard Disk Space
- /boot 50MB + /4GB  + Shared Swap Space
- Changed to 10GB as not enough disk space for BT to copy files over

KDE works in Macbook but not Acer Timeline 5820T (X won't start)
BT5-Gnome-AMD64 also does not work (X won't start)

Result Abandon BT5 for Acer Aspire Timeline 5820T

==============================================================

Linux Mint 10 Julia KDE (stable and reliable for main work)
- General work
- Deb and apt
System Requirements
- 5GB of Disk Space changed to 10GB as space ran out
Broken Mint Update fixed with:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
http://b10gger.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/fix-broken-packages-error-using-mintupdate/
- cannot get wireless to work on Acer Aspire Timelime

Wireless fixed with the following from the following post:

- Wireless Lan does not work out of the box

https://buildall.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/wifi-card-does-not-work-after-install-the-kernel-2-6-38-3-in-ubuntu-10-10/

sudo apt-get --reinstall install bcmwl-kernel-source

===================================================
useful commands
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r) 

==============================================================

Shared Swap Space : 5GB
The rest of the drive: Data


http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/installation/176485-how-partition-drive-multi-boot-2.html
==============================================================

AVLinux5.0
Installer too confusing

Install Fedora 15 KDE instead
==============================================================
FreeBSD 8.2
Needs to be installed in Primary Partition

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CentOS 5.6 Kernal Panic (Text mode intall only)
==============================================================
Haiku - not much apps, no log out, alpha software

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Oz Unity Debut / Oz redux 64
Works out of the box
==============================================================

Ultimate Edition 2.9 Ubuntu based
Worked out of the box

/************  End Multiboot PC Notes  ************/

The new configuration will have a 250GB Partition with a Shared Data Folder in C: drive instead of 100 GB for Win 7.

The total process of re-installing Win 7 and required software completed at around 4:00am the next morning. The brighter side of it is that the computer now has a version of Win7 pro instead of the factory adware version of Win7 from Acer. :)

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