Unable to boot into LiveCD on Acer TravelMate 8573T, unresponsive with black screen

Hello LQ,

I have to boot various linux distrobutions onto my Acer TravelMate TimelineX 8573T all with the same, or similar results. Each time I tried to boot from both LiveCD and LiveUSB using various methods. I have used Windows to prepare the USB and CDs. For USB, I have used both with Unetbootin and using the OS's suggested method. With everything I try, the screen will go black and the number lock keys and caps lock will not respond. I couldn't figure out what happened, eventually I tried booting Fedora and removed the setting "quiet". At this point it presented me with the fedora verbose boot screen and froze completely as it had before after it had printed the line "Freeing unused kernel memory:" (and then it continued the line, listing memory addresses).

Having searched this line, I read a few posts by various people who tried to compile kernels. What I had read suggested that this occurs when they try to use an i686 compiled kernel on a processor that can't support i686. I Double checked and I am most definitely using a 64 bit processor.

I am quite confident that it is not a memory issue, I have been running a multitude of windows applications with no error on Windows 7 64-bit and had once before (when I was in much less of an experimental mindset) tried to install linux on this machine but became frustrated when I encountered this issue.

My other thought was the possibility that UEFI boot processes are interfering? Arch was quite clear (and I'm assuming fedora also defaulted to this) that it was trying to use UEFI boot. As far as I know, UEFI is not installed on my system. My BIOS is very limited but it gives neither mention nor option relating to UEFI/SafeBoot.

I have tried Arch Linux and Fedora, I will soon try debian and then Ubuntu and see what happens.

Is anyone familiar with this issue or knows what the problem might be? I would like to install Arch Linux x64 on my laptop but have been unable to find a work-around for this issue.

I should add, I have not yet tried a 32-bit distro but it is in my download queue and will test it soon.

Thank you,

Nahum.

Do you get any text at all before the screen goes black. with some kernels and laptops with Intel graphics, one the intel driver is loaded, the backlight will go to zero. I've had this happen with a couple of different distros now (debian, ubuntus). Don't know if this is your issue, but it doesn't hurt to mention it.

Two possible paths to pursue:

1. Boot with the nomodeset parameter on the kernel line (in addition to removing rhgb and quiet). Given that Fedora showed you some text, it could be that kernel modesetting is not supported by your video card.

2. Try booting a 32-bit OS. I had a desktop PC (believe it was a Dell) that ran 64-bit Windows Vista just fine, but would not run a 64-bit Linux kernel (I tried Fedora, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, and Mageia). No problems when running a 32-bit Linux kernel.

HTH