My brother-in-law has an older Acer Aspire 5000 the didn't work with Windows XP so I told him to try Ubuntu. He took the discs and instead of trying it he erased the hard drive and installed Ubuntu 8.04. This is good. He wants the give the laptop to his friends parents to use to surf the internet and watch DVDs however Ubuntu 8.04 doesn't work with with his wireless ussb adapter. I tried installing Ubuntu 12.04 however it didn't work; the install went fine it just wouldn't launch after I removed the disc. Thought I'd try Linux Mint 13 and had to try in Compatability Mode since there is an issue with ssomething to do with IRQ3. In Compatability Mode the Asus USB-53 works fine. When I restart the laptop to run Mint from the hard drive it displays the Linux Mint 13 screen with the count-down dots and then it just hangs on a screen displaying all these codes etc and stops. I tried to install b43 device firmware using the trial method of Linux Mint however I don't know if that worked. It does say something about IRQ3 problem ad blacklist however this is displayed for a very short time and I am unable to record the entire message. Any thoughts oon how I can get this to work? I'm so close.

If the machine came with xp, it's pretty old and may not be capable of running Mint. There are a number of factors so if you could get some information on the hardware, CPU, RAM, etc. and post it here it should be helpful.

After installing Ubuntu, did you reset the boot priority in the BIOS to boot from the hard drive?
I'm not really clear on the current status, did you install Mint over the Ubuntu or are you using Mint off the flash drive/

The laptop is running AMD Turion 64; 1GB RAM. I installed Mint over Ubuntu so it is the only OS on the machine. Runs fine from the DVD however not from the Hard Drive. I did find something in release notes for Mint 13 and has to do with boot hanging on systems using b43 wireless cards. Apparently if you can get into Grub one needs to modify the boot options to add b43.blacklist=yes. I have no idea how to do that if I am unable to boot into Mint.

You should see the boot menu with the different kernel options before the Mint screen. When you see that, follow the instructions from the site below at the Mint site to see if that works:

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=102693

When you have pressed the start button on the machine hold down the Shift key until it shows the Grub Screen which gives you a few options. Choose the second one from the top, it should have (recovery mode) or something similar at the end of the line. Once you have selected that hit enter and you will get other options. I would choose FailsafeX (I think that's what it's called) and then you should get into Mint and be able to modify things as required.

I was away for a few days and just getting back to this issue now. I tried the link yancek suggested however I can boot from the live CD no problem. I tried pressing E when I launched Mint from the hard drive and was able to get to a screen with options and by pressing F2 you get a command line. This what is displayed first however. I have to type the entire screen since I am using 2 separate machines for obvious reasons.

GNU GRUB version 1.99-21ubuntu3

setparams 'Linux Mint 13 Xfce 32-bit.3.2.0-23-generic (/dev/sda1)'

recordfail
gfxmode $linux_gfx_mode
insmod gzio
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext_2
set root='(hdo,msdos1)'
seardh --no-floppy --fs-uuid -set=root 7731951a-5ba5-4596-a886-f9cb\1990ffbe
linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-23-generic root=UUID=7731951a-5ba5-4596-a8\86-f9cb1990ffbe ro quiet splash $vt_handoff
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-23-generic

Now when I try F2 and get a command line I tried to enter the commands found in the link however none of them are recognized.

I also tried the suggestion provided by k3lt01 and the following is displayed:

Recovery Menu (filesystem state: read only)

resume resume normal boot
clean try to make free space
dpkg repair broken packages
fsck check all file systems
grub update grub bootloader
network enable neworking
root drop to root shell prompt
system-summary system summary

I still have the same problem to modify the boot options and add the b43.blacklist=yes.

Boot Mint from the hard drive. When you see the Grub boot menu on screen for Mint, hit the e key on your keyboard and it should change. Use the arrow key on your keyboard to move down to the line which begins with 'linux'. Use the right arrow key to scroll to the end of that line where you see $vt_handoff and hit the space bar once and then enter the blacklist line. If it works, you need to make the change permanent as explained in the link above.

That worked! Thank you yancek for your help. Once you know where commands are supposed to go the rest is relatively easy.