Black screen freezing after Bios update

Hey i have a problem that i cant seem to find anywhere else, would be grateful for any help or support.

I am recieving a freeze after the boot up (the set up and acer screens) but before linux will start properly. it freezes on a black screen with the pointer (mouse icon) present. i have followed all the advice i can find including updating the bios, which i have succesfully done via macles advice. it now states im running the newest bios 3309. :?

unfortunately nothing is working and i really need some of the files on the drive. if there is anyway to recover them then and or unbrick my acer without doing a full system reboot i would be ver gratefull. any ideas are welcome.

Thanks in advance

 

Try to disconnect AC adapter and remove battery for a while... Some people already reported it helped after BIOS update. Worth trying I think...

 

hey tried that unfortunately still no luck. from what iv read it seems most peoples hanging black screen is before the acer start up screen where as mine is after.

seems like it might be a different problem, more related to the OS . but i cant do anything except move the mouse icon, no terminal or anything :S.
thanks anyway

 

Most likely you can. You will have to make a bootable Linux USB stick on another machine -- I can heartily recommend system rescue cd, which despite its name can be put on a USB stick (full instructions at the site).

After logging in, su to root. (don't need to do this with sysreccd as it logs in as root)

Code:

sudo su

Determine what drive you need access to:

Code:

fdisk -l

You will see your 6.5G partition somewhere here (SSD), or your hard drive. Likely sda1. Depends on what distro you chose.

Mount it:

Code:

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows

Copy your files:

Code:

cp /mnt/windows/directory/and/filenames /where/ever/on/USB/stick

Now you can maybe find out what's wrong; sounds like grub is OK since you get to X -- that's why you see the cursor. Most likely your group-app.xml file is corrupted or screwy. It's up to you whether you want to try to salvage your existing install or just run the recovery. Salvaging it could be a lot of work, and if you don't have backups of certain key files, may be impossible.

 

The first thing I'd try after bootin a sysrescued Linux is to run fsck against the SSD drive:

fsck -y /dev/sda1

and see whether that fixes the problem.

Cheers.

 

thanks for the help so far

so with a little difficulty i managed to boot sysresc cd onthe usb drive and its working fine.

but i cant seem to copy any files to the usb, i assuming it should follow your example for instance:

cp /mnt/windows/home/user/documents /dev/sdb1

for instance to copy the documents. however this doesnt work instead i get the message not a valid directory, do i need to copy individual files only? and what would be the correct directory for a usb drive?

thanks again

 

You can find out where the USB is mounted by running

Code:

fdisk -l

Caps are important in Linux, the directory you mention is actually

Code:

/mnt/windows/home/user/Documents/

 

the problem is i cannot see the files i need to copy, is there anyway of seeing the file directory and i know a problem exists with spacing and filenames. sorry if this is a simple question. would really appreciate it

 

Do you mean, how do you switch directories and list files?

Those would be the

Code:

cd

command to change directories, and the

Code:

ls

command to list files in a directory.

For example,

Code:

cd /mnt/windows/home/user

would take you to your home directory, and

Code:

ls

would list the files there.

You could further cd to directories within that one with (for example):

Code:

cd Documents

You could copy all files within the current directory with a wildcard:

Code:

cp * /dev/sdb1

To see the current (working) directory, use:

Code:

pwd

 

ok thanks i think im starting to understand unfortunately i am still unable to copy the files onto a usb stick i recieve the note
cp: target '/dev/sdc1' is not a directory.

is there something else i am missing i have plugged in a seperate empty usb stick to copy the files onto and it is FAT formatted. located at /dev/sdc or sdc1. do i have to mount that or something? so close i can feel it

 

Right, just need to mount it. If it's /dev/sdc then you'd make a mount point, say usbstick, and mount it like this:

Code:

cd /mnt
mkdir usbstick
mount -t vfat /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usbstick

And, for example:

Code:

cp /mnt/windows/home/user/Documents/* /mnt/usbstick/