cant install linux, cant even boot from live cd or usb
 

i recently bought an acer aspire m5201 desktop pc, AMD Phenom X4 9000 processor, 4 GB ram
http://www.acer.co.uk/acer/product.d...CRC=3129920466
it came with vista preinstalled, i went about shrinking the partitions, freeing up space for ubuntu, put the cd in and all was well until, it could not correctly detect the graphics card and would be run in low graphics mode. if you run in low graphics mode or try to configure the graphics yourself it the same thing happens,

the screen tells me
starting deferred execution scheduler atd
starting command scheduler crond
checking battery state
running local boot scripts (/etc/rc.local)

and there it hangs and continued to hang for more than an hour.

after than i tried running knoppix from cd and then backtrack 3 from usb, both had the same problem, but a different problem from ubuntu, neither could mount there local file system and the boot stopped.

after deciding that maybe it was all back luck i tried once more, this time with fedora 10, unlike ubuntu which told me there was a problem, fedora 10 went about doing its stuff then my monitor turned itself off claiming the frequency was out of range.

oh and just incase it matters, due to an interesting setup by acer i have no access to the bios settings whatsoever, but can choose boot options.

please help, i want my linux.

Live CDs do not mount local file systems.

you seem to be having some other problem... graphics card?

make?

Boot knoppix with vesa for example.

Post output of

#lspci

Hi Andyrew,
Sorry about your problems. You may want to burn the Ubuntu alternative bootup disk which is used when you're system isn't bog-standard and Ubuntu has trouble recognising stuff. You may have more joy that way.
Another plan would be to check out your laptop on this site:
http://www.linux-laptop.net/
Linux on Laptops
There you can benefit from other people's experience with (hopefully) your model.
Cheers,
jdk

Hi Amani,
sure they do, at least the ones I've used (Knoppix and Puppy). They typically show up on the desktop with the harddrive icon.
cheers,
jdk

Sucks not having BIOS access. I hope it doesn't start a trend. As for your problem, maybe try booting with acpi=off option