dani wrote:
Hello,

I have a bit of a problem! I purchased an Acer 5250-BZ853 last year, in October
(I remember because it was my birthday), and it's been working fine aside from
a
few minor mishaps. But then yesterday, it all wen to hell. I did a windows
update, and I have no idea of what happened but a few hours later, I restarted
it because it was acting up and that usually fixes it. The first time, I
panicked because when I came to the log in screen it said my password was wrong
-- as if while I was gone for a few minutes (giving my laptop time to load up,
because I had to take the dogs out), someone had changed it. Now, this isn't
possible. One, because no one knows my password. Two, my password has been the
same since the day I got it and put one on.

I began panicking and kept restarting it (maybe once or twice), and then it
worked for a bit though the desktop was ALL wrong. It then restarted on its
own,
and has ever since continually been just restarting over and over. I have
important files on there and when I Google'd it, someone suggested I try to
install Ubuntu so I can get my files off (someone else had the same problem),
and so I tried to get into safe mode -- but it won't even let me get that far
into, to where I can log in. It just restarts. I did the pressing F8 button and
disabled the restarting upon error, but it STILL restarts. It acts as if I am
about to log in, but then the blackness continues until it restarts all over
again.

I'm just at a loss. I'd really like to get my files off. My plan was that
apparently the update did something, so I'd use Ubuntu to get my files off and
then reformat it to factory settings. Now I can't even get as far as logging
in/installing Ubuntu!

Help, please?

This is the procedure I use on my laptop.

1) Unplug cables, remove battery from bay.
2) Turn laptop over, and lay the laptop on a soft cloth, so the bottom of the laptop is exposed.
3) Remove two screws over the hard drive bay. Remove the plate, which covers several components.
4) Remove the one screw securing the hard drive sled. There could be one screw, near the connector end.
5) Grasp the plastic pull tab, and gently move the tray back in its slides.
That pulls the 2.5" SATA drive, out of the motherboard SATA connector. The drive is
held into a tray with screws.
6) Pull the drive tray upwards out of the bay, being careful not to break any connectors.
You could remove the drive from the tray, if you thought it might overheat
(but I doubt that is absolutely necessary). Drive dissipates 2 watts while running.

7) Plug the drive into a desktop computer, using a 7 pin (usually red colored) SATA
data cable, and a 15 pin SATA power cable.

8) Use backup software, as you see fit, or copy files off laptop C: to desktop data
partition.

9) For bonus points, you could run a diagnostic on the laptop drive, see if the
SMART stats are bad, or whatever. You can use HDTune to read the SMART.
http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe Or, you can use a diagnostic
downloaded from the disk manufacturer site, which will do some quick tests.

*******

For the alternative (ubuntu) method, you will need

a) Broadband modem (it's not practical to get 700MB over the internet with dialup at 56K)
b) Trip to Ubuntu to get 700MB download - 10.04 LTS version recommended.
10.04 has a more conventional menu and interface, for "less of a learning experience".
I have trouble finding the Terminal application, using the newest version.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download
c) Blank CD to hold the Ubuntu files.
d) Burner software, to convert the 10.04 LTS ISO9660 download file, into a boot CD.
Nero (pay) or Imgburn (free from imgburn.com) can do that.
e) An external USB backup drive. This will hold the laptop files, when done.

Steps:

1) Download 10.04LTS ISO9660 file. Since your laptop is "crash and burn city",
you won't be doing the download on it.
2) (Download Imgburn, if you don't have burner software. It runs under Windows)
3) Your burner software, will convert the ISO9660 file into a bootable CD with
multiple files on it. Do not "drag and drop" the 700MB file onto the CD.
That won't work.
4) Set boot order so the CD tray boots before the laptop hard drive tries to.
That is typically the default on the laptop anyway.
5) Boot into Ubuntu.
6) If the laptop reboots, before you even have the chance to select "Try it"
and not "Install", then you know you have a problem like bad RAM, bad CPU,
overheating CPU, bad power circuits etc.
7) Select the "Try it" option, as that is not supposed to install anything.
*Do not* select Install!
8) Now that the OS is up, and appears stable, plug in your external USB hard
drive, which will accept the copied files.
9) Go to the Places menu. A confusing list of partitions will be shown. If your
Windows partitions have labels, it helps a bit. Clicking a disk icon in the
"Computer" entry, should mount it so Linux can R/W to it. You'll also want to
click and mount the single partition on the new USB external drive.
10) You can drag and drop files, from one file manager window there, to the other.
Or, you can use the Terminal application from the left-most menu, first sub-menu.

In Terminal, with two disk partitions mounted, you'd do commands like this.
The # marks my comment section, which you do not copy into terminal...
Just the stuff on the left is the command. This is the command line equivalent
of dragging and dropping all the files on C:, to the USB external drive.
Linux can handle NTFS or FAT32, and the only reason to care about which is
which, is if any of the files to be transferred are 4GB or later. FAT32 can
handle files up to 4GB in size without a problem. If your source was NTFS
and had a DVD dual layer sized file on it, a FAT32 destination might not accept it.

df # This reports the names of the partitions
cd /mount/yoursourcepartition # Use the available info to figure out the name
# This could even be a string of numbers, like a GUID.
cp -Rp * /mount/externalusbpartition # That would copy the files. * means "match any name"
# from the current directory (cd set that). R means
# "recursive descent", while p means "preserve permissions".
du /mount/yoursourcepartition # Last number on screen, is size of source files.
# It's a way to get size info, for a sub-tree of files.
du /mount/externalusbpartition # Last number on screen, is size of destination files.
# There should be a rough size match. You can also use
# the "df" disk free command, to get much the same info.
# If the sizes are close to one another, you probably got
# everything.

Now, right click on the USB disk icon on the desktop and select "eject", to
do a Safely Remove on it. That would be, if you wanted to unplug the USB drive
before shutting down. (In Linux, an unmount should be done, before
unplugging something.) This is optional if you just plan to do a "shutdown"
from the menu.

If you use the menu in the upper right hand corner to do "shutdown", then the
OS will unmount all partitions, so you won't need to unmount or eject anything.
On a "shutdown" request with a LiveCD, the disc tray will be ejected. Remove
the disc from the tray, close the drawer, then hit the Enter key once to
tell the OS it's safe to power off.

Slaving the laptop drive to a desktop, as in the first (eight step) procedure,
is less work than using the Ubuntu you haven't downloaded yet :-)

Note - the Acer can be a bit annoying, to see the BIOS options.
The CD is probably already in the boot order. If you press "F2" at power up,
that might get you into the laptop BIOS. If you press "F12", you might see
the popup boot menu, as an alternative. If the machine uses Insyde BIOS, it
might boot rather rapidly, not giving an opportunity to read the startup
options printed at the bottom of the screen. On my Acer, I can't open the tray,
until the laptop is powered, and by then, it's too late to boot the CD. Which means,
selecting shutdown from Windows, and booting the CD on the second try.

Slaving the hard drive, is so much easier. Slave to a working desktop,
and grab files as you wish. The desktop cabling for the job, would look
like this (7 pin data, 15 pin power). Of course, the desktop needs a SATA
interface, for this to work. Old desktops, don't have SATA. And old laptops,
would have an IDE drive in them. If the hard drive is 2.5" IDE, you'll need
a 40 to 44 pin adapter, plus a spare location on the desktop ribbon cable.

http://community.wdc.com/t5/image/se...v=mpbl-1&px=-1

Paul