Hmm... I would guess you need to pass some video mode value but do not have a clue. If you can see the grub boot menu then we have half a chance, boot from the drive you can press the tab key. You should be able to see the kernel boot line. ctrl-x gets you out of the edit mode.

Otherwise might have to go with a live version that boots to command line mode like system rescue cd. This is also a learning experience for me to ...

I can definitely get to that. I did it earlier. What should I do from there? Or do you need more information?

I am very grateful for your time and effort.

Been busy overnight I see.
Show us the boot menu - take a photo in need. Then highlight one of the entries (top one is best) and hit the "e" key to go into edit mode. Take another photo - that will give us a good idea of whether they are still using Fedora. If so it's easy enough to get into a rescue mode to run the fsck (filesystem check with repair) mentioned in that thread. Just hit <Esc> to back out.

OK... I was able to boot from the flash drive. I just had to use compatibility mode. I got to the MINT desktop. I ran the above mentioned commands and took a screen shot



https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...1&d=1510790098

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OK, that doesn't tell us what the machine itself runs, but we can run the check anyway. I've added options to force it to run even if the filesystem seems clean (-f) and fix anything it safely can without prompting you. Serious errors will still prompt.BTW, you should be able to cut-and-paste from that terminal using the mouse - make it easier to post results here.

OK, here goes:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...1&d=1510797583

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Good news, nothing wrong with the filesystems.
Get connected to your network - should be a connection icon bottom right, then do this. If first command fails, no problem it means the software is already installed, else wait til it installs itself. Post the output of the second command - cut-and paste, not photo.

here ya go





mint@mint ~ $ sudo apt install smartmontools
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Suggested packages:
gsmartcontrol smart-notifier
Recommended packages:
mailx | mailutils
The following NEW packages will be installed:
smartmontools
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 436 kB of archives.
After this operation, 1,497 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/main i386 smartmontools i386 6.4+svn4214-1 [436 kB]
Fetched 436 kB in 1s (223 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package smartmontools.
(Reading database ... 197575 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../smartmontools_6.4+svn4214-1_i386.deb ...
Unpacking smartmontools (6.4+svn4214-1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.5-1) ...
Processing triggers for systemd (229-4ubuntu17) ...
Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-19) ...
ureadahead will be reprofiled on next reboot
Setting up smartmontools (6.4+svn4214-1) ...
Processing triggers for systemd (229-4ubuntu17) ...
Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-19) ...
mint@mint ~ $ sudo smartctl -A /dev/sda
smartctl 6.5 2016-01-24 r4214 [i686-linux-4.8.0-53-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 112 099 006 Pre-fail Always - 47697972
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0003 100 100 000 Pre-fail Always - 0
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 265
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 036 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 064 060 030 Pre-fail Always - 2920749
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 1148
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 266
184 End-to-End_Error 0x0032 100 100 099 Old_age Always - 0
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
188 Command_Timeout 0x0032 100 099 000 Old_age Always - 217
189 High_Fly_Writes 0x003a 098 098 000 Old_age Always - 2
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022 075 053 045 Old_age Always - 25 (Min/Max 25/26)
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 025 047 000 Old_age Always - 25 (0 17 0 0 0)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered 0x001a 052 045 000 Old_age Always - 47697972
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0010 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x003e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
240 Head_Flying_Hours 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 1147 (123 183 0)
241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 73847705
242 Total_LBAs_Read 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 87269139

mint@mint ~ $

That is a disk on its way out - all the above should be zero. Or very near.

Wow
Thanks
So it seems that they were correct and I need a new hard drive

Can I just buy one and clone the old one?

Would this explain why my system kept freezing?

For Command_Timeout, that could well be correct. For those other parameters, almost certainly not correct and not a problem if this is a Seagate drive. Those raw values are not simple error counts. See Seagate's Seek Error Rate, Raw Read Error Rate, and Hardware ECC Recovered SMART attributes.

No it does not explain why the system keeps freezing.

Bad memory, overheating CPU or other component.

At the moment I take it the computer is running ok?

Its been running fine for hours like this. Booting off of the flash drive. Seemed OK when I booted from hard drive and I went to grub menus too.

Only freezes when I run the Expresso Bike software during the default boot up.

Do you think that purchasing a new hard drive and cloning the old one will work? Or are there more diagnostics I should do first?

Ubuntu and Mint are designed to emulate Windows boot by hiding most boot messages. At their boot screens you need to choose a non-default option and/or edit away the quiet and splash cmdline options, or add a plymouth.enable=0 option, to have a chance at figuring out why the screen goes black. The same probably applies with the distro that runs the bike software, but if the HD is going bad, you risk furthering the damage trying to use it, and wouldn't be able to use it to replace it anyway. If you do manage to boot the bike's Linux without starting the bike software, and don't mind risking additional damage, and it does have the smartctl program installed, it can provide information about the condition that suggests or not a need to replace.

Other Linux distros are better suited to using recovery tools. Knoppix is one of them, since it's the granddaddy of and expert at live media Linux booting, providing function key access to plentiful boot options, showing all boot messages, and using better auto-configuration for avoiding black screen trouble.

Booted to live Linux stick, if your Windows PC has more available HD space than the size of the bike's HD, you can use the dd_rhelp script, which uses the dd_rescue program, to make a file from the bike's HD. The process of doing so will report disk areas that are hard to read, and try much harder and longer to read them. If successful, the file thus saved can be written to a new HD. Optionally, or if you don't have sufficient freespace, the same dd_rhelp program can recover directly onto a new HD from the old.