Linux boot issue

I bought the A0751h-1279 (2GB, 250GB, vista, blue) for the express purpose of running Linux (i.e. the first time I powered it on, I booted from an external CD-ROM drive and re-formatted the drive as part of installing xubuntu 9.04. It came with vista pre-loaded, but that's totally gone now, as is the recovery partition. (I did call Acer and have them send me a free set of recovery CDs, so that if I sell the machine in the future, if the new owner wants windows on there, they'll have that option.)

The problem I'm running into is this- no matter what Linux distro I try (so far i've tried xubuntu, kubuntu, fedora 11, and centos 5.3, which I have installed literally hundreds of times- I administer about 150 Linux machines for a living) whenever the unit tries to boot from the hard drive, I get the message "Operating System not found". It never loads the grub stage1 loader, and as near as I can tell it doesn't care if the partition table does or does not have a partition marked with the "bootable" flag, or if it does, whether or not that partition contains a boot loader.

If I boot from a CD (such as the *ubuntu CDs) which has a "boot from first hard drive" option, it boots normally. However, allowing the machine itself to boot from the hard drive results in this message. I have manually examined the first sector of the drive, and other than the partition table itself, it's identical to four other centos machines.

I ran into the same issue with an AOA150, not only with Linux but with xp-pro from a corporate-licensed CD (the machine belonged to a client, and they needed the machine to run xp-pro in order to join their domain.) The only way I could get that machine to boot was to leave the original rescue partition untouched and re-install xp-pro on top of the existing xp-home, without formatting the drive first. (This took me almost six hours to get working, and even then it was kinda flaky.) Any attempt to remove the recovery partition, or to format the xp partition while installing xp-pro, resulted in a non-booting machine.

The only thing I can figure is that the BIOS is looking for something special about that recovery partition, or it contains code which requires the specific release of windows which was sold with the machine in order to boot. However, this particular machine is MINE, and I don't want any trace of windows on it, because I do not (and will not) agree with their software licensing terms. It irks me enough that I had to pay for windows in order to buy the machine, the last thing I want is to be forced to waste disk space on it as well.

So my question is, what's the secret here? What is the BIOS looking for, other than a partition table with a valid signature? And how can I work around it, so the machine will boot Linux without demanding that some little bit of windows (or the "recovery" stuff) exist on the hard drive?

 

I really don't know the answer to your question, but be aware that the linux-support for the GMA500-chipset was very poor the last time I checked. I gave up on linux after realizing that the GUI performance was terrible. Even moving a window around on the screen was a painful operation.

 

I've got the exact same issue as you, though I wasn't originally even trying to boot Linux. I bought the laptop for my daughter, and I've long since learned that the first thing to do is shrink the factory C drive partition and create a new data partition... After simply shrinking the partition with a Parted Magic Linux LiveCD, I went down the same rabbit hole you have.. Originally I was able to access the Acer eRecovery services on the PCSERVICE hidden partition via Alt-F10, but while the restore was successful, it didn't fix the problem; after subsequent attempts I can no longer even access the restore partition at boot (though I'm stumped as to why). I used an XP restore disk from another system that allowed me to run a FIXBOOT and FIXMBR, but that didn't work, but accidentally discovered that I could "trick" it into booting the laptop's version of XP using that restore CD (it first prompts one to "press any key to boot from CD" and then boots from the disk if you fail to do so). I've tried to install Ubuntu in an extended partition so that I could use the grub boot loader, but like yourself, found that I couldn't get grub to install properly; I didn't have any success with lilo either... At one point, I even extended the C drive back to it's full size, restored to factory via eRecovery - nada.

At this point, I have spent waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy too much time trying to figure this one out, so I would appreciate any updates you may have, and I will do the same...

 

I just called Acer support about this. BIG mistake.

The first voice was somebody in India. She listened to the problem, gave me a ticket number, and a different telephone number to call (866-621-2237).

I called the second number, which was answered by somebody who didn't sound Indian. I explained the problem to her, and she put me on hold to research the issue. Mysteriously, after two minutes, their phone system played a recording saying "We're sorry, your call was lost. Please tell us how you wish to proceed- press 1 for sales or 2 for support." So I pressed 2, and connected with a different voice who, as soon as she heard the word "Linux", told me that they didn't support Linux, and without waiting for me to answer, said "Have a nice evening" and hung up on me.

So I called back, and this time the phone system apparently recognized my number, because it re-routed me back to the "your call was lost" recording three times, before connecting me with a different voice (this one male) who said he couldn't help with support unless I wanted to pay for support... and instead of being a per-incident fee like anybody else, it was $59.99 for thirty minutes, whether they're able to solve the problem or not. He also mentioned there being a 90 minute option, or a one-year option, and when I asked for the prices, I heard the "your call was lost" recording again. So, other than the second woman (who I *know* hung up on me) I can't say for sure that the people were deliberately hanging up on me, but their telephone system is certainly having issues.

So I'm about to take the unit back to Wal-Mart and exchange it for a new one... and this time, rather than immediately formatting the drive, I'm going to run Windows long enough to upgrade to the latest BIOS, use gparted to shrink the Windows partition, and install Linux on the remainder of the drive.

If I can stomach looking at Vista for that long, anyway...

 

KG4ZOW,

If you still have this issue with your new machine, your problem might have to do with a BIOS bug with the 751h. As crazy as it sounds, make sure that you enable the "Network boot" option in the BIOS, then adjust the boot options to make the HDD first. The "operating system not found" error has happened to a couple of users trying to boot with a (tested) bootable USB drive, and this has resolved the issue. Since this is dealing with the HDD, I'm not sure if it is related.

Have you used something like ranish to ensure that you don't have stale partitions lying around and that the linux partition is set to bootable?

I hope this helps!
-Josh

 

KG4ZOW,

About the only thing I hadn't tried so far was to call Acer support, and I'd thus far avoided that anticipating the very issues you encountered...

What I didn't tell you in the first post is that after going thru everything above, I initially figured that for some reason or another the boot sector had gone bad, and returned the computer to the store for replacement. So this is the 2nd Aspire One, and I was a lot more careful the 2nd time around, making recovery discs immediately after the initial boot, then using gparted to do nothing more than a small shrink of the windows partition, but I still ended up down the same rabbit hole...

I'd disabled network booting, so I re-enabled it/etc per Josh's recommendation, but that only prolonged the agony of not finding the OS as the bios churns forever looking for a network bootable device...

I haven't tried to see if there is a new BIOS version & will now see if I can find an update - since the machine just came out in May I figured that surely the BIOS is up to date, but given Josh's comment re: a BIOS bug perhaps not.. I'm running V0.204 of the system BIOS.

G^2

 

gsquared,

What happens if you enable network boot, hit F12 for a boot menu, then select the HDD?

-Josh

 

There's a v 0.3206 of the BIOS - http://global-download.acer.com/GDF...=Aspire One&Step3=AO751h&OS=V10&LC=en&SC=PA_6. Luckily, they use WinFlash, so as long as your have Windows installed, you should be able to flash to the newest version without having to deal with bootable devices.

 

Good news!

Yes, there was indeed a BIOS update, and it solved this problem, at least for me... As noted previously, I was on BIOS V0.3204; there was a V0.3206 dated 1 July 2009 available on the us.acer.com website... Since I still had the "shrunk" Windows partition, I was able to "trick" the laptop into booting that partition, and then flashing the new BIOS from there... I'm now able to boot Windows normally.

I've not tried to multi-boot Linux yet, and since this laptop is for my daughter and I'd only attempted to do so hoping that grub/lilo would boot Windows for me, I won't be pursuing that path further for the moment. The current system will support my daughter's needs...

Having said that, I still have somewhat of a sour taste in regards to the laptop, as there appears to be other BIOS-related issues I didn't previously mention as they were 2ndary to not being able to get an OS to boot normally: It doesn't appear to want to recognize other devices boot priority even though the order has been changed in the BIOS, nor does it recognize an attached USB DVD drive in an F12 boot menu, but I can force it to recognize the device by entering setup from the F12 boot menu then immediately exiting.... Nor am I able to utilize ALT-F10 to restore the laptop to factory settings even though D2D is enabled...

Since this laptop is for my young daughter, the situation is tolerable; otherwise I'd certainly have to return it (yet again), this time for a credit for another machine...

G^2

 

Seems that I took so long to compose my last message while attempting to boot under a variety of conditions that I missed Josh's updates...

Since I'd already flashed the new BIOS prior to seeing Josh's query about attempting to boot from the HD from the F12 boot menu, I can't respond, but it has me wondering... At the same time, note the issue above re: failure of the bios to recognize the boot priority of a USB CDROM drive...

A HUGE thanks to everyone for their assistance in trying to sort this out...

G^2

 

When you wan't to install Linux is there by any chance a sd-card in one of the slots.
If i remeber correctly from installing Mandriva on my daughters One, he want's to install grub on sda1 and that's wrong it must be

Code:

sda

 

So I took the machine back to Wal-Mart and exchanged it for another one (whose hard drive hadn't been formatted yet.) I told them the truth, that when I turned the machine on, it greeted me with a black screen saying "Operating System not found". The replacement machine's box had been opened, but the salesperson told me that she had done that herself, because a customer wanted to see the laptop (this was a "non-super" Wal-Mart, and they didn't have one on display.) I did have to peel all of the factory plastic off of the machine.

Remembering what had saved my tail with an earlier AOA150, I booted up Clonezilla http://clonezilla.org/ first, and made a full image of the hard drive to an external USB disk. I then rebooted, and was greeted with the oh-so-familiar "Operating System not found" message again.

So either there are a lot of machines leaving the factory with this problem, or the machine is somehow detecting the fact that the user booted something other than Windows, and is punishing the user for doing so.

So I booted an xubuntu CD and told it to boot from the hard drive. The machine happily loads into Vista, spends fifteen minutes installing a bunch of extraneous software I didn't ask for, will never use, and will need to spend several hours UN-installing (thanks, Acer!) and then asks me to set up a userid and password. I do this, and then immediately fire up the Acer eRecovery program, and burn a set of recovery DVDs.

Then I started un-installing the crapware, and when I rebooted to allow the un-installs to finish, I was greeted by my old friend, the "Operating System not found" message. Again. So this time I boot from the "Recovery 1" DVD. It wipes the drive, copies a bunch of archives to the recovery partition, and then restores the C drive from the files on the recovery partition. About this time I need to leave for work, so I leave the machine running all day. Later when I got home, the recovery process had finished, so I hit OK to reboot, thinking their recovery process surely would have cleared up the issue.

Three guesses... and any guess which doesn't involve seeing the "Operating System not found" message is wrong.

And that's where I am right now. I'm using the xubuntu CD to get through the several reboots needed in order for Vista to configure itself, and once it lets me see a desktop I can actually use, I plan to upgrade the BIOS (I've already downloaded the update to a USB stick.) I don't know how many reboots will be involved, but rest assured I will comment further in a bit.

 

The BIOS v3206 update seems to have fixed the "Operating System not found" message. Thank you for letting me know - I had already downloaded the BIOS update, but hadn't installed it yet.

Next up: shrinking the Vista partition and installing Linux to make a dual-boot machine. Let's see how that goes...

 

I shrunk Vista down to 40GB using the partitioner built into the xubuntu install routine. The xubuntu install went fairly smoothly, only two problems:

(1) The video was only 1024x768, instead of the native 1388x768. This was solved by:

- adding the PPA repository, which is where the Ubuntu pre-release packages are found. https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mobile/+archive/ppa/

- doing "apt-get update" as root, to download the list of packages in the PPA repository

- doing "apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-key 0xC6598A30" as root, so the machine recognizes the GPG key with which the PPA packages are signed

- doing "apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-psb" as root, which installs several other packages along with it. There's more to this, but I need to leave for work right now. I plan to do a full write-up on this, and add it to my web site. When I do, I'll add that URL as another comment in this thread.

(2) At first it seemed like there was no sound, however the mixer was set with the master volume at zero, and the "mute" function enabled. I'm not sure if this is the default when you install xubuntu, but turning off "mute" and moving the slider up in the mixer was all it took to get my sound working. The keyboard hot-keys (Fn+UP and Fn-DOWN) don't seem to work, but that's a very minor issue to me, as I didn't really buy the machine for sound- I bought it as a usable carry-around workstation (I work for an ISP with a 25,000 square foot data center, and need to look things up from various places on the data center floor several times a day.)

 

I figured I would be fair and give Vista a chance... a chance to run, but not a chance to ever see the real Internet (i.e. I never plugged in the ethernet cable while Vista was running, I never gave it the password for my wireless, etc.) I've always believed that most of Windows' security problems revolve around the Internet, so if I never connect it to the Internet, it should be safe, right?

I still believe this, however Vista absolutely HATES being told that it can't access the Internet. Every five minutes it popped up asking for the password for my wireless, or my neighbors' wireless, or offering to walk me through connecting to a hidden wireless network.

And while I was able to find the options to turn off most of the extraneous "eye candy", the only way I could make it stop whining about "your computer is not protected" was by installing an anti-virus program. Which only served to change the complaints (i.e. "your virus definitions are out of date") AND chew up CPU cycles on a machine which is already not the fastest thing in the world.

And given the facts that (1) there are already Linux programs to do everything for which I need a laptop; (2) I refuse to "just put up with" the computer whining about virus updates; (3) I absolutely refuse to allow this instance of Vista see the open Internet; and (4) I have recovery DVDs available in case I need to restore the machine to normal...

I formatted the entire drive. Wiped out the recovery partition, the Vista partition, and the existing Linux partitions, and installed Linux all by itself, using the entire hard drive.

And as I had hoped, the machine boots directly into Linux, without needing to first boot a Linux CD and force it to boot from the hard drive.

So as far as I'm concerned, upgrading the BIOS fixed the original problem, AND made the machine act like what I would expect a machine to act like... booting whatever OS happens to physically be on the hard drive, rather than demanding to see a specific "magic" partition, or combination of partitions.

 

I went through the trouble of registering just so I could thank you, KG4ZOW, for posting your findings on this issue. There is something comforting in knowing I'm not the only one out there being plagued by the "You'll use Vista, only Vista, and nothing else but Vista or else" mentality of the major manufacturers of the world. I'd insert a little rant of my own about all the other crap they install that we must either suffer with or waste countless minutes uninstalling but you did a pretty good job of that already.

I bought a new AspireOne the evening of Thrusday, Aug 6, and have literally spent most of the time since then trying to figure out why it wouldn't load the linux boot loader (grub) via BIOS even though booting the Ubuntu live CD and choosing boot from hard drive works fine. I haven't tried updating the bios yet as I'll have to do a restore from the recovery disks I made (hope it works).

I bought this thing because I wanted something light yet fully capable to take with me on my vacation, which started 2 days ago. I can't tell you how 'pleased' I am that I've spent the last two days scouring the Ubuntu forums and watching progress bars and "please wait" messages as I've partitioned and repartitioned and reinstalled and repartitioned and reinstalled some more, employing every single technique I could find to install grub on the MBR and anywhere else it might conceivably be needed, only to be greeted by "Operating system not found" every... single... time...

BTW, the thing won't boot off of USB thumb drives either, regardless of F12/F2/network-boot-enabled combinations stated in other posts on this thread. I'm hoping the bios update will fix that too.

Thanks again for your posts. I'll post again in a day or two to let you all know if I'm able to get windows restored satisfactorily enough to install the bios update, and whether the bios update solves the "Operating system not found" message for me too.

Z

 

zdenik,

Make sure "Network boot" is enabled in order to boot from bootable USB drive. (A BIOS bug that is apparently fixed in the most recent version.)

-Josh

 

A bios update to version 3206 has solved all my woes. I suggest to anyone out there experiencing the same or similar problems that you update your bios before pulling out too much hair.

In order to install the bios update I downloaded version 3206 from http://global-download.acer.com/GDF...=Aspire One&Step3=AO751h&OS=V10&LC=en&SC=PA_6, then I recreated an NTFS partition named ACER using the partition editor under System/Administration/Partition Editor on the Ubuntu Live CD (choose the option to try ubuntu without installing to get to this) and then rebooted with the Acer recovery DVD and chose full system restore/recovery. If you didn't create the recovery disks before going down this rabbit hole you'll have to order them from Acer. Since the system still won't boot after finishing the Acer restore I had to boot with the Ubuntu Live CD again and this time choose "boot from first hard drive/disk". This got me into vista and I was able to install the bios update.

If choosing "boot from first hard disk" after booting from the Ubuntu Live CD doesn't work for you I can provide details on how to setup your grub menu.lst to give you a windows/vista option - this requires installing Ubuntu on a second partition.

Thanks to all that have posted here. It's been three full days of headache for me but I'm now up and running a dual boot system with vista on one partition and ubuntu on another. I'm pretty happy with the capabilities of this little laptop despite all pain and misery the faulty bios has caused.

Z

 

I'm glad I found this thread. The first thing I did with a friend's Aspire in preparation to install Windows 7 was to turn off network boot while checking boot order in BIOS and I tripped the "OS not found" error. I thought something was pretty suspicious when I couldn't fix the problem by reverting my BIOS changes, but... I went ahead and installed Win7 and all was working fine until I unplugged the USB CD-ROM drive and *bang* - failure.

But then I found this thread... then I found this newer 0.3208 BIOS - http://global-download.acer.com/GDFiles ... en&SC=PA_7 - and it fixed the problem.

peace... and good cheer to you all

 

I too am glad I found this. I was having the same issue and after spending DAYS on it I installed the latest BIOS which fixed the problem. THANKS!