A friend and I have been ministering to his somewhat aged laptop, as described.
He has had Ubuntu on one partition for a while, windows on the other.
We suspect the BIOS or related issue---whatever it is, it is
rendering the machine useless. At boot, the machine just hangs.
First, the keyboard is totally unresponsive. EXCEPT when we can boot
GNU/Linux! The "X" key does sometimes work when booting from Grub,
causing the "boot:" message to be repeated each time it is pressed. No
other key seemed to work at that time. We couldn't operate in the
BIOS setup, until a Compaq web site suggested we press "F10" before
booting. Then is was ok. We could see nothing there that could help.
However, even then the Live CDs we tried were excruciatingly slow.
So slow that it was hard to tell whether they, or the installed
systems worked at all.
We booted "Damn Small Linux," a credit card cd distro
(http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/): it worked, keyboard and all!
It, and Kubuntu too, booted sometimes without an "Enter" key being
pressed. Then, after a boot, we were able to access the keyboard.
Trinity Repair Kit also booted, and the keyboard was ok, in console
mode; we weren't sure what to do from there...
A USB keyboard was likewise dead, when we tried it. We could get
responses rarely from the onboard keyboard.
I suspected BIOS issues, and possibly a need to flash. The Compaq web
site is not exactly straightforward. We did see a number of support
links for this model, and one of them suggested (for some kind of
error, we weren't sure whether it applied) to hold down the power
button for 5 seconds. We did. Then hold down F10 while booting.
When we did this, we were able to get into the BIOS, and the keyboard
worked ok! But when we booted a live Kubuntu CD, the keyboard either
did not respond, or was so slow that it SEEMED not to.
The system is glacially slow altogether.
We felt that perhaps the BIOS has been corrupted, disabling the
keyboard BIOS and requiring a flash, but we were confused by the
Compaq support site. We reason that since GNU/Linux can get the
keyboard, once it's running, it takes over the keyboard routines.
My friend, as well as myself, would appreciate any suggestions. Does
any of this ring a bell?
Thank you,
Alan Davis
--
Alan Davis, Kagman High School, Saipan [log in to unmask] 1-670-256-2043
I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I
must share it with other people who like it.
--------Richard Stallman
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