Laptop woes!!

[dwynnehugh]

Just had an Acer Aspire E15 for a look at – W10, AMD A10 etc, 1GB HDD – switch on – starts and gets to the screen before password one, hit ‘Return’ – p/word screen appears – enter p/word – the following happens:

1. sometimes it gets into the desktop and if so the cursor keeps as a spinning circle on the taskbar for 2+ hours – doesn’t go any further. But I can see the items on the desktop.

or

2. Starts and boots to the first W10 splash screen (the window were it  appears that sunshine is flooding in through it) – nothing else. Just re-sets and re-sets ad infinitum.

I have tried a Ubuntu Live CD – loads but I cannot find what I would call the ‘C’ drive under Windows but as Ubuntu loads I do not get any message that the drive ‘C’ cannot be mounted – which I have had with duff HDDs in the past.

Is it likely that Ubuntu is loading into RAM only?  I’ve been told that the data is the important aspect and if I have to damage the laptop (4yrs old business model) so be it.

Any views on the internal HDD and if duff why doesn’t Ubuntu tell me?  Hope this makes sense.

Many thanks in anticipation,  Dave

 

 

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[Dave Rice]

Ubuntu will load into ram only when using a Live CD, it doesn’t touch the HDD.

If, as seems likely, Windows 10 didn’t shut cleanly the partition will be marked as “dirty” and Ubuntu will not mount it (the same applies if it’s been hibernated or on fast startup).

A better explanation and a work around can be found here

[dwynnehugh]

Hi Dave,  Thanks for the input – unfortunately when I see the W10 taskbar and the small square in the LH corner that you normally select what you want from, all I get is a spinning blue circle – that can last for 2+ hours. I can’t even use the ‘search’ box on the task bar – I get the blue circle.

I have removed the battery in the vain hope that would get rid of the ‘fast boot option’ by just clearing everything to default as I cannot access the re-start option at all.

Booted up main power  w/o battery, Ubuntu in DVD drive – boots up etc but I cannot see that ‘C’ drive at all.

 

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[Tippon]

Can you get Windows into safe mode? It sounds like something might be hanging on start, which is also preventing the clean shut down.

[Ed P]

I agree with Tippon. It sounds like something is interfering with the normal boot process.

I  hate to say it but it has some of the traits of a ring-zero Trojan. Remove the drive if you can and do an external a/v scan. Sometimes that is easier said than done. If you can get into the bios allow it to boot from usb and do an offline scan using an a/v loaded onto a usb stick.

 

[Dave Rice]

Getting the hard drive out looks fiddly but doable (especially the putting back together) https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Acer+Aspire+E5-571+Hard+Drive+Replacement/51951

[D-Dan]

Boot the Linux Live CD, open a terminal, and type:

sudo fdisk -l

sudo blkid

The first will list your drives and the second will reveal their UUIDs. With this information, you should be able to mount your C drive so that you can see what may or may not be going on.

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[dwynnehugh]

The saga continues, have tried and failed the following: BIOS set for the correct boot option –

Bootable CDRom Kasp Rescue 10 – doesn’t see it – boots into W10 and stops.

Ditto with their USB option – BIOS shown ‘boot via USB HDD’ – goes into W10 boot up and stops.

Ubuntu 14 CD – will boot up!!

Have tried the sudo option and it sees the HDD but only as text written on the screen – don’t know a great deal about Linux to be honest – can see it is a NTFS partition but not a lot more.

Now booted into Windows – can see the ‘windows with sunlight coming through them’ – then it flashes off and on.

Is it time for the big ‘ammer?

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[Ed P]

Definitely either a carp drive or more likely a bunch of real nasties on there that include all the A/V and bios diverts.

[dwynnehugh]

Just to add to my woes, the small download arrow has gone walkabouts from my FF  toolbar (top RH side of screen) but L of logo that appears like a vert stack of books (View history, save bookmarks etc).

I have tried the ‘Open Menu’ and ‘Customise’ option as well as ‘Rest prev Session’ to no avail.

Any ideas on how to get it back please?

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[dwynnehugh]

Sorted the FF Download arrow.

Have now downloaded K Rescue Disk 10 again and burnt to a CD, inserted in laptop and now all I get is the black splash screen “Acer – explore beyond limits” and a white dotted circle that spins slowly as if chasing its tail.

Just wondering if KRD10 has been downloaded or burnt correctly – might try using it in my PC to check.

Onwards and backwards!! ?

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[dwynnehugh]

Very interesting Dr Beaker – as some puppet used to say many years ago!!

Just tried to use the Kaspersky RD 10 in my PC – bios set to boot therefrom – nothing – it just boots into W7.  The download was from Kaspersky’s own site.

Am now wondering if the KRD10 is faulty in some way or not burnt correctly. Looking at the Properties of the downloaded KRD10 it says that it ‘might have been blocked by a computer to protect my computer’ – I have ‘unblocked’ it in the Property options should I again try and burn it?

 

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[Ed P]

This laptop is Norwegian Parroted – but as a laptop it should have a recovery mode.

If that fails and it might if the disk or bios has been Trojaned then I’m afraid you are back to drive removal/replacement as an option.

[dwynnehugh]

Thanks for the suggestion, if I can actually get to see the desktop, I can see icons etc and pretty certain that there is a recovery icon there BUT I can never ever get to the point where I get a pointed cursor.  All I get is an incessant spinning blue circle – stymied!! This scenario has lasted over 3 hours at the last attempt!

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[Dave Rice]

As Lewis Hamilton’s engineer says, hammer time!

[PlaneMan]

Probably a daft idea but is the BIOS/UEFI battery working properly? Keeping time and date?  Seen that cause weird issues before.

Usually the last resort for me.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

You may as well have a go at booting from a W10 installation DVD that you make with the MS media creation tool. And I do mean a DVD not a USB srick.

Some PCs and especially laptops with secure boot enabled, or not fully disabled, just will not boot anything other than an MS OS or a copy of Linux with a special loader.

If you do get the W10 DVD to boot then you can try any of the test and recovery options.

[dwynnehugh]

Can anyone explain to me why it won’t boot from a Rescue Disk but will boot from a Linux disk with identical BIOS settings?

Just re-read WofF post – the secure boot is enabled on the l/top, should I try and disable it?

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Yes you should disable secure boot if you want to try booting from discs that don’t have a valid digital signature because if you don’t then the PC will act as if they don’t even exist ?

There are usually at least two steps to make sure its REALLY off though. Depending on the BIOS.

[dwynnehugh]

Well having disabled the secure boot system I have been able to run K Rescue 10 disk which tells me there are no nasties on the HDD but loading Ubuntu again fails to show the HDD in the LH column – is it meant to?

I suspect a knackered HDD or certainly the bootable bits – time to open it up, remove and try and read the HDD to get the data off and then test it to see where that takes me!

Thank you all for the suggestions up to now, much appreciated.  Diolch,  Dave

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[Author]

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