[SOLVED] HELP!! This thing is for the BIN otherwise...

[katmac]

There I was, minding my own business, turn on the computer (An Acer Aspire One running the ever-popular Linux Lite) and I get the following Error Message...

Internal Error
failed to initialize HAL!

What?

I've looked around and it would seem this seems to happen to people after they've installed new programs etc. I DIDN'T. I shut it off after writing an email, turned it back on and VIOLA! Le crap.

If anyone DOES have a fix, pu-leeeze don't assume I know what I'm doing! I can assure you, there's a VERY valid reason I'm in the Newbie section!!

ANY HELP is GREATLY appreciated!!

P.S. I DID try to phone Acer Help Desk but I was told that she couldn't help me over the phone unless I PAID her.

CHARMING!!

[katmac]

I can't do ANYTHING on it now..I'm currently using the terminally ill desktop..and before anyone asks, there is NOTHING attached to any of the usb ports. The only thing I've EVER had plugged in there has been a mouse.

[katmac]

I've JUST noticed that the little icon for the power is showing that it's currently plugged in and it ISN'T.

Does this help anything?

[Rubberman]

Does it boot at all? If so, can you get to a command line? If so, what does the command "dmesg | tail" show?

[katmac]

Alright Rubberman, my days of thinking I was going to replace Bill Gates were awhile back now, so...where am I determining these pressing issues again? The Terminal pages would be my first guess and, if I'm right, am I doing the 'root' thing?

It WILL boot up as far as the main menu screen and I can get into OTHER applications, I just can't get online.

[katmac]

Um, following what logic I still HAD, I entered just the 'dmesg' in the Terminal window and got A LOT of info...anything in particular I should be looking for? (Considering I'm using 2 different computers!)

[katmac]

A HA! (What do I know? Perhaps this is as important as what I had for DINNER, but there is ONE line that looks rather 'suspect' here. It reads..

r8101: eth1: link down

that help?

[katmac]

How about this one...

clocksource tsc unstable (delta = 108746433 ns)

seems rather ominous, no?

[Rubberman]

dmesg will output all the kernel logging data. That's why I said to pipe it to the "tail" command, which will only print the last few lines, which are usually where the problem is noted, although that might not be the case. IE:

dmesg | tail

That's the 'or' bar (shifted backslash) between dmesg and tail. You can run dmesg as root, but you don't need to. The fact that the battery light is on when it isn't plugged in is questionable. Something like that happened to my Dell laptop a couple of months ago, and it was due to the battery going burp. They had to replace it (at least it was still under warranty).

[katmac]

Holy crap! Is it THAT bad? I've lost everyone here!