Asus eee PC boot issue

kkelly77

A friend of mine has an Asus eee PC 1015CX laptop. It was running extremely slow with W7 on it so I installed Xubuntu for them. However, she has since told me that she was installing updates and when she restarts the laptop, it just has a black screen and is not booting.

I got the laptop today and whats happening is the laptop is only booting as far as the Asus splash screen. I can't even get into the BIOS now. No key options such as F2, F8, F10 or holding down the SHIFT key are working.

I ended up taking the laptop apart and pulling out the hard drive. When I tried to start with no hard drive, it booted straight into the BIOS screen. When this occurred, I took the hard drive and put it in another laptop and was able to install Lubuntu on it. But when I put the hard drive back into the original laptop the same thing happens; booting as far as the Asus splash screen and no further with no Function keys working either. Can't boot off USB drive either.

Can anyone offer some advice as to what else I can do? I'm stumped

Alanstrainor

I'd test run a diagnostics software on the hard drive regardless. Could be a RAM issue. Had similar happen to an Asus netbook a long while back. Take one stick out, boot and see what happens, then do the same for the other stick.

kkelly77

Alanstrainor wrote: »

I'd test run a diagnostics software on the hard drive regardless. Could be a RAM issue. Had similar happen to an Asus netbook a long while back. Take one stick out, boot and see what happens, then do the same for the other stick.

This particular model has RAM which is not accessible/upgradable.

Alanstrainor

Ah right, not familiar with that machine to be honest with you.

You should be able to remove the HD and install it in another machine to check it though.

kkelly77

Alanstrainor wrote: »

Ah right, not familiar with that machine to be honest with you.

You should be able to remove the HD and install it in another machine to check it though.

I did. See my original post.

Alanstrainor

kkelly77 wrote: »

I did. See my original post.

Just being able to install Ubuntu doesn't rule out the disk being at fault imo.

My Asus machine had 1 stick soldered to the board also, it was the onboard stick of RAM that went on it, luckily i was able to disable it in the BIOS and use the 1 slot available.

Beyond testing the HD to make absolutely sure it's not causing something strange, I would say you're snookered. My money is on the RAM.

riclad

SEE does a linux livecd boot on the laptop with drive removed, then put the hardrive back,
Check does the bios, or laptop, memory test option.When hardrive is back in,see does linux cd still boot up.
http://lifehacker.com/5531900/use-an-ubuntu-live-cd-to-test-your-pcs-memory

use this cd, to test the memory.

Torqay

kkelly77 wrote: »

Can anyone offer some advice as to what else I can do? I'm stumped

The Eee PC has a feature called Boot Booster, disable it in the BIOS (remove the HDD if necessary). Also, the Eee PC boot menu is called via ESC, not F8 or F10.

kkelly77

Put the dodgy hard drive into another laptop and booted from a Lubunutu live USB. Looks like hard drive is on it's last legs.



With the hard drive out of the laptop in question, I can boot off the Lubuntu live USB no problem and get into the BIOS too. I'll try a known working hard drive in the laptop so soon as I get my hands on one.

Thanks for the replies folks.

Alanstrainor

Great success :cool:

kkelly77

Just to update the thread - Tried a working hard drive in the laptop in question and it worked fine. Original hard drive will be replaced. Fixed.

Alanstrainor

kkelly77 wrote: »

Just to update the thread - Tried a working hard drive in the laptop in question and it worked fine. Original hard drive will be replaced. Fixed.

Awesome dude. Fair play.

unkel

Alanstrainor wrote: »

My Asus machine had 1 stick soldered to the board also, it was the onboard stick of RAM that went on it, luckily i was able to disable it in the BIOS and use the 1 slot available.

Fair play for diagnosing / sorting that! I bet you tried just about everything else first?

kkelly77

unkel wrote: »

Fair play for diagnosing / sorting that! I bet you tried just about everything else first?

I've never had a faulty hard drive prevent access to the BIOS before, that's why I was convinced it was something else.


EDIT: D'oh! Your reply was not to something I posted.

Alanstrainor

unkel wrote: »

Fair play for diagnosing / sorting that! I bet you tried just about everything else first?

Yup.

It was infuriating. Symptoms were random bluescreens on a fresh Windows 7 install. I assumed that it was a driver issue, as Win7 was never a supported OS on the machine. Also, this happened the day before I was heading away on a trip to the states and I needed a machine fast! My temporary solution was to install Ubuntu on an 8GB memory stick and boot off that for the 3 weeks I was away. (Mostly needed the laptop to check photos and get online so it was workable). What was funny is that, it worked flawlessly, didn't have one single issue with Ubuntu, where as Windows would bluescreen within about 20 minutes of booting.

So obviously, I assumed it was the disk, when I got back from the states I ran a check on the disk over night...found nothing wrong at all. I had a spare disk knocking around anyway so chucked it in it to see what happened. After reinstalling everything, and getting away with it for about an hour, I was back to bluescreens.

The error was also non specific, and didn't help matters. It was only that I was running out of options that I ran a memory diagnostic that it found the stick was faulty; disabling it brought the machine back. Just popped back the original disk and i was back to where I started.

Obviously Ubuntu never tried to access the troubled memory on that stick, how that works I'll never know. But it was one massive headache!

Torqay

kkelly77 wrote: »

I've never had a faulty hard drive prevent access to the BIOS before

I have seen this before, IIRC with a HP laptop. Removed the drive et voilá.

On the topic. I have a 1005HA here which gave away because the HDD was broken (and I couldn't be @rsed to take it apart), twas working grand with Android on SD Card. The lad replaced the HDD with some 80 GB WD drive but couldn't install anything so I had a look. Now I can get into the BIOS and the boot menu, but it won't boot from external DVD, USB stick or SD card, just hangs after selection. I suppose it's time to remove the replacement HDD again.