Help & Advice

[Rory McCann]

Hi Peadar.

Sorry to hear you're having trouble. From reading your email I can't
immediatly see what's the problem. Usually wiping and re-installing is a
catch-all way to fix most things. But on a netbook (with no CD) it can
be harder. It's something I'd have to sit down in front of it and have a
got at it. :)

We are having our monthly 'Ubuntu Hour' next Wednesday 24th from 6pm in
the Trinity Capital Bar, Pearse St., Dublin, but that's probably a bit
far for you! (http://www.ubuntu-ie.org/node/88). That sort of event can
be great to bring your broken netbook to and someone there can have a look.

I'm sending this email to the main Ubuntu Ireland mailing list, perhaps
there might be someone in Cork, or someone wants to do an 'Ubuntu Hour'
there.

One solution I can think of is to press Control-Alt-F1 (at the same
time), and then you get into non-graphical mode. You can log in there
(with the same username & password), and do commands. You can do a full
software update with "sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude upgrade".
Perhaps doing a full softwaren upgrade might help fix/upgrade broken
software.

However to do that you need internet access. Getting connected to the
internet from non-graphical mode is not as easy as graphical mode, and
depends on your set up.

Does anyone else (from Ubuntu Ireland) have any ideas to help?

Rory

On 13/02/10 11:13, Peadar MacGabhann wrote:
> Hi Rory
> I hope you don't mind me contacting you.
> I bought a Dell Mini 9 with Ubuntu installed for my daughter. It ran
> into problems and sent it back to Dell under warranty. It wasn't back
> long when it ran into problems again. So its been sitting for months now
> without use. She tells me she needs it urgently as her exams are coming
> up. So when I contacted Dell they told me it was out of warranty blah
> blah and it was going to cost more than the computer to get it fixed.
> Anyway here Iam trying to fix it and unfortunately I have an old Windows
> head on me and a lot of the advice I'm reading is double dutch to me.
> When the computer is switched on, it boots up, I enter in the username
> and password and as soon as the main screen comes up the mousepad is no
> longer available and I get the message. *The configuation defaults for
> GNOME power manager have not been installed correctly. Please contact
> your computer administrator*. It also tells me that updates are
> available and I should click on the icon. But as the mouse is frozen I
> can't do that. I downloaded the ISO File ubuntu 9.10-netbook-remix-i386
> onto my Windows machine and also USB installer for Ubuntu (which is
> probably for windows install) and I transfered them to a USB pen drive
> and tried to boot the Netbook from that. Needless to say it doesn't work
> and I seem to be missing something. This is probably a 2 minute job for
> you but Ive already spent hours at it. It reminds me of the good old
> days when DOS was all we had and I used to spend days trying to get
> things to work. Can you help me in anyway. Would really appreciate it as
> this is driving me crazy...
> Thanks
> Peadar
> 
> 
> -- 
> Peadar Mac Gabhann
> Kinsale
> Co. Cork
> Ireland

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