Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

noalternative · Joined: 10 Nov 2009 Posts: 104

How do I diagnose what's wrong. This is my moms laptop. It is an Acer Aspire with a single core Pentium 4 and 2gb of ram. It doesn't reboot on bios or boot option splash screen. It will not boot into winblows Vista.

mcewanw · Joined: 16 Aug 2007 Posts: 3194 Location: New Zealand

Perhaps could be a RAM problem - maybe in higher memory than BIOS accesses. You could try re-seating the memory (take it out and put it back in again with machine off of course). If the 2 GB is in two sticks of 1 GB each could also maybe try and see if you can boot with either of these in if re-seating the memory doesn't fix things (i.e. 1 GB RAM as a test). Could alternatively maybe be a graphics system issue - you could maybe find a distribution that can be used to boot to commandline only mode - I'm not sure how to do that with standard/unmodified Puppy, sorry.

William

cthisbear · Joined: 29 Jan 2006 Posts: 4200 Location: Sydney Australia

" How do I diagnose what's wrong
"
Need the model number mate.
You might even see how to boot it on youtube.

:::::;;

An example.

How To Fix Laptop That Won't Turn On

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqg5wQpkK14

I also take out the ram as well as the battery, disconnect the hard drive and bios battery, and hold it down for 30 seconds.

I then re-assemble all and try to boot and reset the bios.

Make sure you ground yourself- prevent static electricity.

Chris.

musher0 · Posted: Thu 04 May 2017, 06:24 Post subject:

Between us Puppyists: it's a good thing that it doesn't boot into
WhineDose Vista, eh? Twisted Evil

But seriously:
Can you boot into the BIOS menu and check if it displays the proper time
and date? You boot into that BIOS menu usually by holding down the
Delete key at boot time.

If the BIOS doesn't display the current time and date, it means the CMOS
battery is dead. It's the big flat, round, silvery "quarter" inside your
computer. Here are a couple of articles about it.
https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000239.htm
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/replacing-the-motherboard-battery

It's easy to change by the user. Jot down the number of that battery to get
the exact replacement. It cost me about 5$ for a set of three at a dollar
store about a year ago. Computer shops and camera shops carry them
too. But computer shops will charge you an arm and a leg to change it.

~~~~~~~~~
@mcewanw:

To boot a Puppy as a console distro only, at the prompt you type: