Cannot boot from Live DVD with Dell XPS 17 into Mint, Ubuntu or Fedora

I've had some excellent success! Despite my problems differing from here, a similar approach fixed it! For the record, I booted from USB (Linux Mint 12, 64-bit, Live DVD), using "Universal USB Installer". On the Linux splash screen, I edited boot options (by pressing tab). I found this line

/casper/vmlinuz noprompt cdrom-detect/try-usb=true persistent file=/cdrom/preseed/mint.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash --

and added text to make it

/casper/vmlinuz noprompt cdrom-detect/try-usb=true persistent file=/cdrom/preseed/mint.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash -- acpi=off

I then installed Linux Mint (using gparted to make partitions, as the installer partitioner failed).

I restarted, again needing to specify acpi=off. I edited boot options again (this time by pressing "e" as per the on-screen instruction. Then, I changed the line ending with

...quiet splash vt.handoff=7

to

...quiet splash vt.handoff=7 acpi=off

I opened up terminal, typed in

sudo nano
/etc/default/grub

then changed

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi=enable pci=noacpi pci=assign-busse acpi=ht"

quit nano (control-x, "y", enter), then edited the GRUB file from within terminal by typing

sudo update-grub

Do you know what the "acpi=enable pci=noacpi pci=assign-busse acpi=ht" options actually do? Is this a suboptimal workaround? I have noticed a problem now, where I cannot wake the screen after it begins to sleep. Is there a way to solve this?

Cheers, and thanks for all the advice!

To clarify, the screen works fine on waking from suspend. The issue that I have is when the *screen* sleeps (and the computer remains awake). In this situation, I cannot make the screen wake up.

First, obviously, make sure your bios is set to boot from the DVD-rom or USB.

Its best to use the Live version to see if everything works, but the full size DVD for the actual install if the 2 are different. The distro and its version should be identical.

I use k3b to burn O/S discs. DVDs ad CDs are usually the best way to install, even if you need an external drive for a netbook. Live USBs sometimes work well, but can be troublesome at times. Obviously, burn at a slower speed then max. Usually I burn at 50% to 75% of the max speed. I haven't had any problems doing it that way.

Sorry, I think you replying to my previous post? I've since installed Linux, by tweaking some settings, but I'm not sure what they did exactly.

Thanks for the help anyway.

So I have been reading more, and came across this page that describes some of the boot options, and ways to troubleshoot acpi issues. The page suggests that if "acpi=off" solves the problem, then to try other options, as quoted here:

acpi=ht
    the most like "acpi=off", disables all of ACPI except what is needed to enumerate processors.
    If acpi=off works and acpi=ht fails, then the issue is in the ACPI table parsing code itself, or perhaps the SMP code. 
pci=noacpi
    Disables ACPI for PCI root bus enumeration.
    Disables ACPI for IRQ routing. 
acpi=noirq
    Disables ACPI for IRQ routing. 
pnpacpi=off
    Disables the ACPI component of the Linux Plug and Play code. 
noapic
    Disables the IO-APIC for IRQ routing. 
nolapic
    Disables the Local-APIC and the IO-APIC.

I tried all six options independently, and the only option that worked was pci=noacpi. Unfortunately, I don't know how to interpret this, nor does the article elaborate beyond troubleshooting.

I suspect that my previous workaround of "acpi=enable pci=noacpi pci=assign-busse acpi=ht" was overkill. I couldn't find much information on acpi=enable, but this would seem counter-intuitive, since I'm turning parts of acpi off later. pci=assign-busse was also un-Googleable, and is possibly a typo for pci=assign-busses? Finally, acpi=ht seems unnecessary since pci=noacpi works alone.

I was wondering if anyone could elaborate on the effects of pci=noacpi on my computer, whether it was a valid workaround, and whether there was a better alternative.

Not a big deal. Acpi is usually OK in newer systems but I am stumped as to why it fails on a new system.

acpi is generally power but could be much more. The specification covers a lot of hardware controls.

It is a valid workaround for many types of hardware. Generally acpi fails more in laptops.


Sorry about my initial assumptions.

Thanks. And no worries. I appreciate the time and effort you have put into helping me.

Just to give this thread some closure, and hopefully help others with similar problems, I've since managed to boot without any custom options. I'm not 100% sure what it was, but I installed Bumblebee, which is a package that controls the Optimus Nvidia graphics card (since the native drivers do not function correctly). This package will not work with pci=noacpi (or acpi=off), so I attempted to disable it. This worked fine (both in booting and with Bumblebee). I'm guessing that either general system updates or this package is to blame for fixing my computer!

Thanks again.