Long delay before Acer welcome screen

Hi firends,

I really hope someone can help.

Last week I bought a new Acer Aspire 7741G. The first thing I did was to make the recovery dvds like a good boy, afterwards I installed Linux Ubuntu 10.04 taking the option to use and partition the entire drive, thus deleting the windos installation and also the recovery partitions. No problem.

UBUNTU works in itself like a charm, all hardware was immediately recognised, even the webcam! I was a really happy camper. Since then however a couple of problems have surfaced:

1. When I switch on the computer there is an agonising 2 minute delay before I even get to the ACER EMPOWERING PEOPLE welcome screen. After this the computer boots normally. What can be causing this? This happen before I even get to the acer welcome screen where I have the chance to enter the BIOS:

2. The windows recovery dvds dont work. When I set in the BIOS to start from the cd, it starts no problem (again, only after about a 2 minute delay), it goes through the first "loading files" screen. When it gets to the next "starting windows" screen it just hangs.

If anyone can shed any light on these issues (more importantly is the first), I would be very thankful.

Regards
Martin

 

Sounds like Windows has issues (there is a windows forum here, BTW)
Is this one of the dual-boot Android machines?

 

Acer has a hidden recovery partition for Windows XP; if you have used the entire disk, that partition is gone, and you cannot restore Windows from a backup. I don't know if this has anything to do with Ubuntu 10.04. I have had nothing but trouble with 10.04; 9.04, followed by upgrade (not fresh install) to 9.10 have been flawless on an AA1 D150.

If you early into this process, you might try installing 9.04 or 9.10 to see if it makes a difference. You might also check the Acer corporate web site to see if there is a BIOS upgrade available -- BUT, in my experience, flashing the BIOS is much easier with Windows than it is with Linux. Finally, you might want to check this: http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/acer/faq/acer.htm

 

Is the BIOS set to look for a floppy drive (or some other non-existent device) as the first boot device? If so, and the device is not present, your system will keep trying for a certain amount of time before timing out and proceeding to the next boot device.

 

Following RockDoctor's suggestion, have you tried booting while holding down the F12 key? This will show you the boot device list, which can be re-ordered. The F12 option is turned off by default; you have to boot with the F2 option to turn it on. I also turned on password checking at the BIOS level; that way, it's impossible for anybody to boot the machine, no matter what OS is installed.

That said, my internal drive is the second device on my list; if I have an SDHC card with an OS in the card slot, or a bootable USB connected, it automatically boots from one of them. Optical drive is #3 on the list.

It's truly unfortunate that you deleted Windows, as it's very easy to flash the BIOS (there may be a newer version available) from Windows, but more more difficult without it. Much as I loathe Windows, it is useful for some things.