My baby laptop

[stonebender]

I bought a laptop several months ago on Woot, thinking I could install linux and play with it. I've wanted to use linux for years but was always worried I wouldn't find versions of all the adaptive software I use. I think I found most of what I need. So I tried installing Ubuntu unsuccessfuly. someotherguy kindly offered to help get it installed. He tried everything he could with no success either. Now we think its my CD drive or my hard drive that's screwed up. I don't know where there's a good computer repair person/service. Anybody have any suggestions around the San Leandro/Berkeley area to get a computer fixed?

Comments

[serene]

Was there a warranty? I didn't think to ask you that yesterday.

[stonebender]

Nope and I'm probably padt the warranty even If I had one.

[jesse_the_k]

No ideas for local dealers. If you have a working Windows box with USB, there are utilities which permit you to download a Linux distro, copy it a USB drive, and then boot or install from that USB drive.

Aaaaand that's about all I know re: Linux.

[maize]

If it's the hard drive, then that's something you should be able to get anyone to help you replace if you buy a new one. If it's the CD drive, then it's harder to say, and my recommendations would be useless, since they wouldn't be local.

There are a couple of ways to discern which the problem is. Many linux distributions have a "Live CD" version. Knoppix is also famous for this. If your internal disk is shot by the CD drive is fine, then you should be able to boot one of these okay and use it. There are also many freeware hard disk diagnostic utilities. Again, if the CD drive is fine but the internal disk is shot, then you should be able to run one of these and check the internal disk, which should return errors.

If that's the case, then you can just buy a new disk. You'd have to know whether the internal drive is IDE or SATA, but if you know the model you can probably look that up or I could help you try to look it up. Replacing the disk in most laptops these days is fairly trivial. I could see if I can look up info. on doing it for that model if you want, but if you can get an assistant who can use a screwdriver reasonably well to help, you shouldn't even need them to be particularly geekly to be able to complete the procedure.

If Knoppix or another Live CD distribution won't boot or the hard disk diagnostics won't boot, then probably it's the CD drive, which is a tougher fix for sure.