Big Computer Adventure Tomorrow

[exeterdad]

You Rock!

[rbistolfi]

Congratulations for the great work!

[Kocil]

People are intimidated by computer hardware, but really, it's just stuff plugged into other stuff.
--GrannyGeek

LOL, I will quote this for my students 
I'm teaching "Digital System" you know,
A lot of time I stressed to them that a CPU is just a bunch of NOR, NAND, and NOT gates,
plugged into each others. They hardly believe that.

[Vxt]

Good on you Granny !

Hey K -
I can vouch for the "nor" parts, nand not sure -
but the NOT must be  legacy (Billy  Gates')

[GrannyGeek]

The last message I posted was the very last thing ever produced by my beloved Toshiba laptop. I had actually written a longer one, but my browser disappeared suddenly. I restarted it and my second effort also terminated the browser before I finished it. I think I managed to get my third effort posted. That was followed by a hard lockup--no keyboard, no mouse, had to use the power switch. I then booted into Windows to see if the problem persisted there, and indeed it did. Windows started, but before I even ran a program, I got a black screen with nothing on it and I had to use the power button.

Attempts to reboot failed. I let the laptop sit unplugged overnight so I could see what happened when it was stone cold. Alas, failed boots, garbled screen at power-on. I couldn't boot a LiveCD. The laptop is over four years old and out of warranty and fixing the innards of a laptop is out of my league.

So I bought a new one. It's a Gateway Turion 64 X2, 2 gigs of RAM, 160 gig hard drive, GeForce graphics chip. Came with Windows Vista Home Premium, which isn't too bad once you figure out how to tame its more annoying aspects.

In addition to the laptop, I got, free-after-rebates, a Canon Pixma MFP and a D-Link wireless router. Both printing and scanning are supposed to work in Linux.

I'm hoping to get VectorLinux installed in a virtual machne on the laptop so I can avoid repartitioning the drive and a dual boot.

I *really* didn't want to deal with the expense and bother of a new laptop at this time, but such is life, I guess.
--GrannyGeek

[nightflier]

so I can avoid repartitioning the drive and a dual boot.

Understandable. However, right now, before you start filling up the drive would be a good time to so. Even if you don't end up using the additional partition(s) for Linux, having your documents separated from the OS is a very good idea.

On the other hand, if you do go down that path, be sure not to disturb any hidden partitions where the manufacturer has stashed the restore information. I deliberately broke the Vista install on my laptop (Home Basic, I was not planning on keeping it anyway). It had a 4GB hidden partition and one big NTFS drive for everything. Re-sizing the NTFS part did not hurt anything. Wiping the C-drive and restoring using the rescue disks worked fine. But when I removed the hidden partition and tried to restore to a newly created slice, it balked. I tried to re-create the partition structure manually, but no go. It seems like the restore procedure expects to find certain bits on the hard drive and if not present, refuse to continue.

[lagagnon]

... Alas, failed boots, garbled screen at power-on. I couldn't boot a LiveCD.

Does the laptop complete its POST (power on self test)? , ie do you get the successful single beep from the speaker soon after turning the laptop on? If so that usually means the mobo and CPU are "probably" OK (but not always). But if the system freezes or whatever soon after a successful boot and you can't boot even a LiveCD it "could be" either something as easy to repair as a failed RAM module or a bad hard drive. I assume it fails during the BIOS stages then?   

[GrannyGeek]

Does the laptop complete  its POST (power on self test)? , ie do you get the successful single beep from the speaker soon after turning the laptop on?

Mostly no. A few times out of many tries the computer did complete a boot, but usually it would stop before it completed POST and could not be persuaded to reboot with Control-Alt-Delete. The computer had to be turned off.

But if the system freezes or whatever soon after a successful boot and you can't boot even a LiveCD it "could be" either something as easy to repair as a failed RAM module or a bad hard drive. I assume it fails during the BIOS stages then?   

Mostly it doesn't even get into BIOS stages. I'm pretty sure it's not the hard drive. I'll remove the RAM modules individually before I give up on the laptop. If it works, it may become GrampaGeek's own computer.
--GrannyGeek

[GrannyGeek]

right now, before you start filling up the drive would be a good time to so. Even if you don't end up using the additional partition(s) for Linux, having your documents separated from the OS is a very good idea.

Knowledgeable people disagree about whether having separate partitions for the OS and documents is worthwhile. I generally partition with backups in mind. In Windows, I make an image file of the drive with the boot files and Windows system files on it. For the other Windows drives I just make straight copies to external hard drives.

On the other hand, if you do go down that path, be sure not to disturb any hidden partitions where the manufacturer has stashed the restore information.

Yes, I know about that. On this laptop there is a 10-gig Drive D that has Restore files. I intended to leave that alone if I go the partitioning route.

Re-sizing the NTFS part did not hurt anything.

What did you do the resizing with? It sounds as if you weren't doing a nondestructive partitioning. I'll probably go with the latest System Rescue if I decide to resize.

Thanks for the tips.
--GrannyGeek

[nightflier]

I stand corrected. In my opinion it is a good idea to keep documents on a separate partition. It sure helps me when I'm experimenting, re-formatting and installing new distros. People, knowledgeable or not, often seem to disagree 

The inital re-sizing was non-destructive, using the PCLinuxOS installer.

Then I used cfdisk and cleared the partition table. At this point, getting Vista back would probably require more than just the restore discs.

[Triarius Fidelis]

God...I don't know how I'd live without /home

[GrannyGeek]

God...I don't know how I'd live without /home

0

Do you mean as a separate partition? My /home is just a directory on /. But I don't lose it if I'm reinstalling or destroying /. I just copy /home onto an external hard drive and everything is safely preserved and ready for reuse.

You folks have to get with the times.<g> External hard drives are the way to go. I have four of them totaling 760 gigs.
--GrannyGeek

[Triarius Fidelis]

You folks have to get with the times.<g> External hard drives are the way to go. I have four of them totaling 760 gigs.
--GrannyGeek

Whippersnapper...

[The Headacher]

A few times out of many tries the computer did complete a boot, but usually it would stop before it completed POST and could not be persuaded to reboot with Control-Alt-Delete. The computer had to be turned off.

This sounds like the exact problem I'm currently having with my Asus Z92k at the moment. It's already been to the repair, but they only fixed the keyboard  (I had some stuck keys). On my laptop though, it seems that "gently tapping" (hitting) the underside of the laptop before booting improves the chance of success, which suggests something is loose somewhere (o.t. motherboard??). I'm going to send it in again, as soon as I finish the paper I'm currently writing on it.

[Triarius Fidelis]

This sounds like the exact problem I'm currently having with my Asus Z92k at the moment. It's already been to the repair, but they only fixed the keyboard  (I had some stuck keys). On my laptop though, it seems that "gently tapping" (hitting) the underside of the laptop before booting improves the chance of success, which suggests something is loose somewhere (o.t. motherboard??). I'm going to send it in again, as soon as I finish the paper I'm currently writing on it.

What's teh paper on, Headacher?