Help with black screen of death please!

[moonlighting54]

Hi,

I have a netbook Acer Aspire One with Linux ubuntu operating system. I have had no problems with this in the 2 years I've had my Acer, then all of a sudden I turn it on and there's a black screen. Can anyone help me please? I get absolutely nothing coming up at all when I switch on, just the black screen.

Please treat me as an absolute beginner when offering suggestions - I know nothing about sorting out any of this.

BTW, I did some research on the net and found that lots of people have had this problem with their Aspire One, though on contacting Acer they want £50 just to look at it as it's outta guarantee. Lots of people have been able to put this right on their aspire one if they are running it on Windows - they just have to download something from the Acer website to sort out the bios, but they do not have anything on the site to download for those running Linux!

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks very much.

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

Does Display work fine if you boot up from LiveCD of any Linux distro?

[moonlighting54]

Hi and thanks for the welcome!

There is no CD drive in these netbooks.

A Recovery CD that came with it which I could copy to a memory stick and try but would that be advisable as I think I would lose everything I have on there? I know I may lose it anyway but I was hoping to save it if poss.

Sorry if my replies take a while - without my little netbook I have to wind up my old PC now and again!!

[rokytnji]

What Linux operating system were you running on this Aspire One?

Guessing it is Linpuss.

I had the same problem and its a very simple fix. When your computer is booting up right before the logo screen hit F8 rapidly or hold it down (either works) Then go to system restore. Run the program from there and it should be good.

From

Acer Aspire One (Another "Black Screen"!

[Segfault]

Do you see the backlight coming on?

[moonlighting54]

Yea think it is linpus. Can't try the fix you quoted as when I switch it on I get absolutely nothing on the screen at all so don't know when to press F8 (though I did just try switching it on and just held F8 down continually but nothing happened unfortunately). Thanks for the input though rokytnji.

[moonlighting54]

Hi Segfault, No I get nothing at all.

[rokytnji]

A Recovery CD that came with it which I could copy to a memory stick and try but would that be advisable as I think I would lose everything I have on there? I know I may lose it anyway but I was hoping to save it if poss.

Another thing you can try is to make a Puppeee (atom version)Live USB. Boot it up

Copy and paste what files you need to save to another USB. Then use your recoveryy disk. Reinstall all saved data from other USB to rreinstalled new system.

Linpus is a crippled Linux System as it is unsupported and is based on Fedora
7. Fedora 13 is thhe current release.

edit: I mentioned Puppeee because it boots up on my Acer Aspire One Netbook . I have the 120 gig sata drive Windows XP sp3 version ZG5. I also run the Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook release on my acer as a dual boot with Windows (I have the room). How big is your Solid State drive on your acer?

of course if backlight aint working. All this is moot. I would make a live pendrive of some kind of Linux Live USB to test if everything lights up first.

[moonlighting54]

Sorry I don't understand what you mean. Is it poss to explain in more detail pls?

Thanks.

[moonlighting54]

I have the 120gig drive so plenty of room.

You said
"I would make a live pendrive of some kind of Linux Live USB to test if everything lights up first."

How do I do this?