Help!

I have some (not much) experience to run a Linux Mint Live CD successfully but not with this laptop.

This laptop is NOT working perfectly but most of the time it can work in Windows 7 with some issues (describing details will take too much space and may not be necessary).

I was suspecting hardware or windows OS corruption issues. I run disk health check and memory check but it did not report any issues. Therefore I pull up my Live CD and select to start Linux Mint in live mode, hopefully it helps to unveil problems if any. It starts for a short while and then what I see is a lot of texts scrolling up so fast that I can only catch its words after making screenshots.

Please review the attached and offer suggestions.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...EU?usp=sharing

Thanks for reading.

Most of those images are not clear enough for analysis, but good try.
The video is totally unusable for me, but that may be due to my settings. I might be able to download and view them locally, just not in Drive.

My first thought was bit-width mismatch, but it appears you are getting the system starting to load properly. One image I saw looked like the screen to select install or run live, and that indicates some degree of success. None of the lines that I COULD read in the screen pictures looked like fatal errors.

After the test scrolls past faster than you can speed read, how does it finish? What message or messages does it end on, or do you get it up and running in the end?

yep that is exacly what I thought .

ohhh dude that is called the boot screen. no one can read that fast. not anyone I know anyways.

you can run sudo dmesg in the term and get output of stuff that gets loaded and errors and warnings of anything. Make sure you have your scroll set to infinity.


if it is not booting completely because you didn't state if it is or not, you can start the process of elimination by replacing parts with known good ones to see if that fixes it.

requires money and the ability to return everything you buy without telling them why you're really buying it. to trouble shoot your system.

I see this is a Dell VOSTRO http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/dell.html
Try another distro? (you did not say what level of MINT you tried; what exact hardware DELL it is).
This is what I would immediatly do (depending of the kernel level and distro, the booting can happens differently).

Hardware is a Vostro A860, a laptop with the worst design where I cannot remove/disconnect it easily to help isolating the problem. Yes, trying another distro is my next move. I am running the latest level of Linus Mint 18 Sarah, 32 bit version (Mate desktop).

No, I do not select to wait longer than 2 minutes. I don't think waiting helps. The system seems to run to an endless loop. The (seems-to-be) endless loop was ended by me via power down. With a similar system like this (Core 2 duo and 2 GB memory) Mint must boot up within 1/2 minute based on my previous experience.

Dell seems to focus on Ubuntu? https://superuser.com/questions/2628...ro-a860/262848 http://www.linux-magazin.de/NEWS/Lin...t-Vostro-Serie so, first try Ubuntu and later MINT?

I've just tried with Ubuntu. It has very similar results with LM. No one can read what it shows. Screen texts are scrolling too fast. My last trial will be to remove all partitions from Hard drive and format it. It might give some new findings before I give up.

A video was captured but due to its size i selected to upload a series of screenshots only. See

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By...mF5WFRvZUpPZlk

The text passing past faster than you can read during boot is normal. That is NOT a symptom and need not be fixed. In fact, I am not sure that it CAN be fixed, it is best ignored.
If the machine truly does not boot, that cannot be ignored, but you are not passing us any error message, screen shot, or video that 'I' can tell gives us a real clue.

IMPORTANT Question: What is the end state of a boot attempt?
Can you get to a command-line prompt (using ALT-F1 perhaps)?
If we can narrow this down to a kernel issue, driver issue, or X-Windows issue we have a far better chance of nailing the problem.

Questions related to the recent snapshot document:
Are you booting from a live-cd image on the USB device? (It appears so, and I believe earlier discussion mentioned.)

It appears you are getting to the loading of processes, and I see a lot ending in (OK). Are there any ending in (ERROR) that I am not seeing?

New thoughts: perhaps install the operating system onto an USB, address a LAN-address to it, then boot from USB and connect to the notebook via SSH from another PC (I already had done it with my raspberry PI server). Then look at all messages from a quiet screen from this other PC.

Just a note that the latest version of Linux Mint is in fact 18.1 Serena. Available in 32-bit.

Let me repeat if it has NOT been clear. The machine cannot boot to the end properly. It is like going to an endless loop. There is no way to read the message properly as the texts are scrolling too fast

See above.

Yes. Live image from a USB device. Trying out with LM latest version (Mate desktop) and Ubuntu the then latest version I created a few months ago got similar result.

See above. It must run to an endless loop as I have waited between 5 to 10 minutes with the latest trial. Like everyone here who had examined the videos, I am unable to see anything as the texts are scrolling too fast.

Very well, then we need to stop the loop (or at least pause the display) WITHOUT powering off so we can read that message. Have you tried break, Ctrl-C, or Ctrl-S during that looping?
NOTE: any of these can take a few seconds (up to 30) o take effect, but I would not wait on them for long.

You might try a more base live-cd like tinycore or puppy to test the hardware. These use base VESA drivers for the video, and often work when other things fail. Something like this, a very small boot distro, may be worth a try.

Boot using nomodeset? https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2212603
Or: according http://euro.dell.com/de/de/corp/Note...ro-a860&s=corp
your notebook has a graphic "Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100+"
which flicker quite a lot according results from "google Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 flickering linux"
Go through the posts there to see what would be the most adapted for you.
Just an idea..

1 members found this post helpful.

I found the problem after a few days. That was due to a faulty keyboard where at least one or more key(s) are stuck (having sticky keys as a result of coffee split or similar).

I think this absolutely silly and a bit embarassing that I never considered the YUBAN bug! ;-)

Adding the question: "have you or anyone else spilled a drink into the keyboard" to my technical troubleshooting steps. Thank you VERY much!