76 replies to this topic

[terry1966]

If you were unable to enter the boot menu (F12) nor access Recovery Management (F10) with the methods outline in post #5, then unless the Hard-drive has failed, your netbook probably has no recovery partition.

all that means is that the mbr has been changed from factory settings, and something i've run across a few times and the recovery partition was still on the hard drive so could very well be the case here too.

thought i'd warn you tho that in my opinion, you really don't want to write anything to the drive at least until you know what partitions are still on the hard drive and what they hold.
you could still overwrite data or delete a partition holding important data that may still be needed to fix things without this knowledge.

i'll leave you to get along as far as you can now hopefully getting adasha up and running again, i'll be here to try and help if you run out of ideas or can't fix the windows os tho.

[Lee]

Terry, What do you suggest we put on the USB that is bootable? Puppy, or some sort of diagnostic program that is easy to use? What I use for diagnostics when I cannot boot to anything would not be suitable or easy to use and is not to be to be recommended in this forum I have already been told, by those higher up the food chain

[terry1966]

yes puppy would be fine and the one most use here,
of course i'd prefer a suse kde live cd
but after a bit more thought maybe an ubuntu live cd would be best.
the netbook probably came pre-installed with ubuntu if xp wasn't on there,
so it would give adasha a chance to get used to it in operation if we find the windows os can't be repaired but it can be restored to a factory state running ubuntu.

really it just depends on what your used to tho and comfortable with giving a user instructions on, whatever you decide to use i'd need to go and download it myself and brush up on it's use, they all more or less do the same thing just look different or use one or 2 different types of software to achieve the same result.

adasha

I've never even heard of Linux. Not sure I'd know how to work it?

so here's some youtube video's showing linux in operation, ubuntu live cd in this case.
https://www.google.c...i...909&bih=608
and an installed linux system in operation, ubuntu 12.1
https://www.google.c...i...909&bih=608

[Lee]

I'm not comfortable at all giving directions on using any type of Linux distro or even installing it. Using Puppy to rescue files is fine, but it is not going to be an issue here. I have installed Ubantu (easiest to use for a newbie apparently) onto one of my seldom used computers here, but beyond that when the flood of "how do I do ...." questions come, forget it old son. Linux is just not my cup of tea YOUR THE MAN

[terry1966]

no probs we can work through any questions that may pop up together.

[Lee]

Adasha,

If F12 did not work you need to buy a 3GB flash drive which should cost about $5 and proceed as follows.

Create a bootable USB copy of Puppy Linux

Follow the Phase 1 ... directions to create a bootable Puppy USB. If you haven't already changed the BIOS boot order, please follow Phase 2 ...
If there was no BIOS option to set USB as first boot, some computer motherboards auto-detect a bootable USB and considering the Aspire One has no CD drive, fingers crossed, lets hope it is a feature of your netbook's BIOS.

If the USB boots (it will take awhile as you are using USB) and to see what is actually on your computer using Puppy, follow Phase 3 ... In the bottom left of your screen you will see one or more numbered sda icons and one only sdb 1 icon that represents your USB drive that you are now using. sda represents any partitions on the hard-drive. As you are not rescuing personal data from the computer, there is no need to follow any more of Phase 3 ...

Click on the first numbered sda drive and a window will pop up displaying what is on that drive. Clicking on any folder within that window will open another window displaying what is in it. Do this for each and all sda drives if there is more than one to see what is on them. Any sign of W7 or any other Windows operating system?

Phase 5 ... tells you how to shut down Puppy when ready.


If there was no joy in finding a Windows operating system on your netbook:

You can now use Puppy to format your hard-drive and download and install Ubuntu Linux, or for a much smaller download (only 165MB), perhaps even the resource friendly and very fast Precise Puppy 5.4.3, which might suit a low resource netbook better. Ubuntu is a popular beginner's Linux as it is similar to windows to use (a lot of the Linux disto is nowadays anyway) but it is a much larger download of about 800MB.

If there is no Windows OS we can attempt to rescue, I will let Terry guide you through downloading and setting-up Ubuntu (or whatever flavour of Linux) onto your hard-drive, as he is very experienced with Linux and uses it himself.

*Note
"Slako Puppy" now installed on your USB automatically connects you to the internet, so you don't have to set-up an internet connection.

Cheers,
Lee

[Adasha]

Ok, I changed the bios to USB as number 1. Attached is what F12 brings up.

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[Lee]

I don't understand the screenshot (?)

Did you enter setup (enter the boot menu) in the screenshot and make USB first boot ? If so, you now need to follow the rest of the directions in my last post.

[terry1966]

I don't understand the screenshot (?)

the screen shot is just her boot options at the moment.
3 is from the hard drive
5 i'm guessing is from a rom on the motherboard, probably to do a factory re-install, doubt if it still works if partitions/mbr have been altered. could be fixed if restore partition is still there but very complicated thing to try. i'd only be able to do it if i had the netbook in front of me. lots of trial and error involved if i remember correctly from the one and only time i fixed something like that.

when she creates a bootable usb drive and inserts it, then starts the netbook it should show up as an option to go along with those two when she taps F12, not that she needs to tap F12 at all if she's already made usb first boot option in bios like she said.

adasha

when you first boot the puppy live cd and get to the desktop can you post a screenshot of what you see please.
depending on a few things i might just suggest trying to re-installing the grub bootloader and see if that gets your pc back to how it used to be.

Edited by terry1966, 06 March 2013 - 11:17 PM.

[Lee]

puppy live cd

Adasha, I think Terry means "live USB" .

i might just suggest trying to re-installing the grub bootloader and see if that gets your pc back to how it used to be.

Terry, your the (Linux) man

Edited by Lee, 06 March 2013 - 11:56 PM.

[terry1966]

wouldn't say that.. but i'll take over for now if you want and find out what we can and may try the easy fix of installing grub if everything looks ok after comparing grubs boot list (that should still be there with any luck) to the partitions. fingers crossed it'll be an easy fix if not then we'll have to put our heads together and see what's next on list of things to do before a drastic os re-install of some kind.

[Adasha]

I did the boot from USB with the iOS on it and this is what it says:

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[terry1966]

that's great,
it shows that you created the live usb stick correctly and it will boot from it,

EDIT:- when it gets to where you are in the screenshot please type in

fdisk -l

and post a screenshot of the results please.
it has to be typed in exactly otherwise it doesn't work all lower case with a space and "-l" is a lower case L at the end.
this will tell us the details of the partitions on your hard drive.

here's an example of the output from that command on my pc.

Disk /dev/sda: 64.0 GB, 64022175232 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7783 cylinders, total 125043311 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00052754

   Device Boot	  Start		 End	  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1			2048	 4192255	 2095104   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2   *	 4192256	67102719	31455232   83  Linux
/dev/sda3		67102720   125042687	28969984   83  Linux

you might as well do what i mentioned before this edit and try a different version of puppy too please.

END EDIT.

and it's not so great,
it failed to start the video display correctly because of a problem somewhere.

we could try and sort the x problem so it boots into a desktop or we could just simple use the command line to enter commands and gather the info i'm looking for but i think it would be quicker and easier for you (and me. ) if we just try a different version of puppy first.
so please download and create a lucid puppy live usb instead please.
http://puppylinux.or....htm#lucidpuppy
here's the direct link to the download i want you to use from that page. :- http://ftp.nluug.nl/...upu-528.005.iso

if this has a similar problem and doesn't boot into a desktop,
fingers crossed it doesn't.
don't worry we will stick with it and just use the command line to gather info and try to fix your problem.

Edited by terry1966, 08 March 2013 - 04:03 AM.

[Adasha]

I tried two different versions of puppy and had same results. I did the above and here is the screen shot.

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[terry1966]

was hoping the different kernal of lucid puppy would work and get you to a desktop, never mind, not a real problem. sorry adasha, i'm very tired at the moment and a bit pushed for time, so will just describe what that tells us, and will post more instructions tomorrow for you after i've done a bit of research, forget about /dev/sdb1 that's just the usb drive your booting from at the moment. /dev/sda1 is the systems hidden partition(approx. 10GB) and should be able to be used to do a restore to an "as new" or " factory" condition if needed(only trouble with that is we don't yet know what os it would restore.) /dev/sda2 is the partition where your windows operating system was and might still be (approx. 116GB). now i must admit i'm a bit confused with the next partition /dev/sda3 i guess was used for a linux os (approx. 117GB) but i thought it would have an id number of 83 or 85 and at the moment i can't think why it has the id 5, which is a dos extended partition number. /dev/sda5 is just a partition (approx. 2GB) used for swap files (called a page file in the windows os.) and proves there was/is a linux os installed.