Hi all,

Im new to Ubu which I installed on a clean system about 3 days ago. I decided to open for the first time, the Database application of OpenOffice and the system crashed. Now it won't boot! I just get a black screen with a flashing cursor in the top left hand corner of the screen. I have no personal files as such on the machine, but the thing won't boot and I can't use it. What can I do?

regards

Hi,welcome to the LQ.
Will you post your lap specs and a little more details about the error/s you have seen on the screen,if any?

Hi Donna,

I wonder if when you installed it changed your boot loader in the BIOS. I get this problem when I try to upgrade my current version of Debian. The boot sequence stops at the manufactures screen that gives the option to enter setup with F2 etc. When this happens to me I take out the battery and reset the BIOS to the default setting by holding down the ON button. It doesn't always work the first time. On a pc there's an 'official' way of doing this by resetting a pair of jumers on the motherboard.

Hope this helps.

John

Hi Alan,

Thank you for replying! If I'm to be honest, I think it might be a hardware problem although Im not certain. Its an Acer, so I fall at the post right there, the build and reliability is not dreamy! Ive had it about 16 months as new and it keeps getting hot, makes funny noises and from time to time crashes when browsing the net or launching an application. After a reboot, I would just get a black screen with a couple of white flickering lines and no message. After repeating reboot I would get the same thing and so I'd check the Bios and the hard disk would be absent. With not much else one can do, in the 'Now', I'd resign to leaving it for a good half hour. On boot the system would just return and the op system load with the BIOS displaying the HD. This happens randomly and did so even when xp was on on it. XP validation has been a pain even though I have a genuine licence which is the reason for my decision to try Linux which I might add, has always been a secret longing. Its fantastic! I love it. I feel the difference and it has made a difference in that it didn't crash for 3 days like I say until yesterday. Having said that, I did anticipate and implement Johns suggestion and it has worked so far, hence how I am able to type this reply! So thank you Alan for your input... and thank you very much John for your suggestion, I can move forward now!

regards

I'm glad that you can use your laptop again,but I'm afraid it wan't last long.Laptop crashes for a number of different reasons.This fault is coused by two main reasons;hardware or software failure.In your case,I'm 100% certain that your problem is hardware related.There are three things I would check if I were in your shoes;the physical memory or ram.I'm wondering how much of ram your lap is having,because that fact itself could be a problem.You could try to take out your ram and replace it with new chip,which I suggest to be 1 GB in size.Another thing I would check is a hard disk,you must be sure that is working properly.And finaly there is a power suply.It could be that power connector socket pins are broken.Overheating happens,so chips could need replacing.
My pc was getting hot not so long ago,and one day it simply turned off itself.Reason,the power suply has died.This things have limit.In my case it was 10000 working ours.
One thing you could do with bios is to set it to search for a boot record first from a cd/dvd,and then from the hard disk.It could work,so that you don't have to reset your bios settings every time there is a problem.

Good luck.

Thank you Alan, contents noted. Thumbs up so far and am monitoring the situ closely. I will follow your guidance in the event of a recurrence of the problem.

best wishes