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EXE files don't open on Ubuntu; where to upgrade BIOS?

Check these screenshots out!

Yesterday my system crashed (again) but rather than freezing mid-task, this time it did something. So I grabbed the camera. :) Can anyone tell me what this means? Any clues as to why my system keeps freezing/crashing?

This album contains screenshots of the crash. They are in decending order. After the last photo, the screen went completely black and I had to unplug, then reboot.

This album contains screenshots of the start-up. Since I had the camera out already, I took these to better illustrate some matters discussed earlier in this thread. :) After the last shot with the ACPI notice, it then loads the operating system.

Vot does it mean?

PS. Sorry that some are a little blurry; I've got tremmors. But they're still legible. :)
 
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Michelle Lyon said:
Yesterday my system crashed (again) but rather than freezing mid-task, this time it did something. So I grabbed the camera. :) Can anyone tell me what this means? Any clues as to why my system keeps freezing/crashing?
Click to expand...
Good call.

Michelle Lyon said:
This album contains screenshots of the crash. They are in decending order. After the last photo, the screen went completely black and I had to unplug, then reboot.
Click to expand...
You have a problem with either the disk or the disk-controller. The first 3 images show read/write errors to the disk. From image 4 on it shows problems communicating with the second bus of the disk-controller, the bus on which the CD-ROM drive is attached, though.

Did you use a CD or DVD at the time?

The disk is the most likely part of your computer to break. How old is it? You said the BIOS has date 1998, but the manual on ECS' website is dated in 2003. The specs of the computer are more like 2001, though. Five years is not an unreasonable time for a disk to break. But if the disk is broken, I can't explain the second part of the images.

You could try to run from a live-CD. If it's the disk-controller, it will hang as well. And if it's the disk-controller, you're pretty well hosed.

If it's the disk, you can replace it. That's no pretty job, but with patience, diligence, a set of quality watchmaker screwdrivers and preferably some images to be found on the internet, you can open up the machine and replace it.

Michelle Lyon said:
This album contains screenshots of the start-up. Since I had the camera out already, I took these to better illustrate some matters discussed earlier in this thread. :) After the last shot with the ACPI notice, it then loads the operating system.
Click to expand...
Those seem to be OK. The ACPI notice just says that Linux won't use ACPI to communicate with the BIOS, because the BIOS is too old. That should be no inhibition for it functioning properly; ACPI is just a more modern way to communicate with the BIOS than older ways. I'd rather say, do not try to use ACPI, because it looks like your computer is so old that ACPI won't function properly anyway.
 
Found this on an Ubuntu forum today:

In the BIOS under "IDE Configuration" set "Enhanced Mode Support On" to "P-ATA+S-ATA". When it is set to "S-ATA" (default) the computer will take nearly five minutes to boot, and the cdrom will not be detected properly.
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I'd make that change in the BIOS and see if there's any difference or improvement.

I also found this.

RayG
 
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Ok. I started the memory test but four hours into it (I didn't think it'd take that long!) I quit the test and restarted, because I have a paper due this week and I need my word processor. I will set it again tonight and let it work overnight, and post the results here tomorrow. :)
 
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DDT: By disk and disk-controller, do you mean the hard drive? I believe it is the computer's original. The mainboard (motherboard) and anything on it is original, except for the RAM memory (which I installed myself about two months ago, because I thought the problem was that the system didn't have enough RAM). So if the real issue is not with the BIOS but with broken mainboard parts, I should replace those parts, correct?

On the computer/manual/bios dates, this computer has had multiple owners and multiple operating systems in it's lifetime. There's a good chance it's been Frankensteined somewhere along the way. That's why I thought at first that the software might be the issue.

There was no CD in the CD-ROM.
 
RayG: They're using a lot of terms on that page that I'm not familiar with. Is there an Ubuntu tutorial somewhere? An Ubuntu for Dummies or something? I need to learn the lingo and know the fundamentals before I can go messing with kernels, whatever those are. :D
 
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Michelle Lyon said:
RayG: They're using a lot of terms on that page that I'm not familiar with. Is there an Ubuntu tutorial somewhere? An Ubuntu for Dummies or something? I need to learn the lingo and know the fundamentals before I can go messing with kernels, whatever those are.
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First of all: I'd advise you to try first what RayG proposed, before trying my advice, as it's much easier to do.

First, open a "terminal window" (like a DOS box in Windows); you'll find it somewhere in a menu with a icon depicting a monitor. Then type the command
Code: 
$ dmesg | grep ata
(you don't have to type the $, that's the prompt).

That command gives all the output Linux made during boot, and filters out only those lines that contain the string "ata", i.e., all those line which have to do with detection of disk-drive hardware.

If you see lines like in the second box on that page, then Linux has problems finding the disk-drive hardware, and then you should do the next step.

First, you must become 'root', the superuser:
Code: 
$ su
Password:
#
(the # prompt signifies you're now root).

Then start up an editor; likely you'll have gedit:
Code: 
# gedit /boot/grub/menu.1st
gedit is much like Notepad. If it says "gedit: command not found", try a couple of others, like 'nedit' or 'evim'. The file /boot/grub/menu.1st is the configuration file of the bootloader.

You'll need to hunt for a line that looks like
Code: 
    kernel  /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20 root=/dev/sda1 ro quiet splash
and add at the end of the line the word 'irqpoll'. If there are more such lines, just add at the end of each such line (lines that start with a # don't count).

Then save, log out and reboot.

The word 'irqpoll' you add there is an extra option that is passed to the kernel at boot time. It won't hurt in any case, but it may help your problem. Remember that, if you update Ubuntu, and the kernel is updated too, that you have to repeat the procedure.

The reason for this is that there is a bug in the Linux kernel that is shipped with Ubuntu 7.04 - and maybe still with 7.10, I don't know - in the routine that detects what disk-drive-controllers and drives are present in the system at startup. Passing the 'irqpoll' option to the kernel sidesteps the issue. The screenshots you made were from startup, weren't they?

PS. RayG also made a comment about BIOS options. I don't think that'll apply to your computer. The BIOS options he refers to has to do with hardware that has both old-style PATA disks (with the flat cables) and new-style SATA disks (with the small cables). Your computer probably doesn't have the latter.
 
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Michelle Lyon said:
DDT: By disk and disk-controller, do you mean the hard drive? I believe it is the computer's original. The mainboard (motherboard) and anything on it is original, except for the RAM memory (which I installed myself about two months ago, because I thought the problem was that the system didn't have enough RAM). So if the real issue is not with the BIOS but with broken mainboard parts, I should replace those parts, correct?
Click to expand...
Yes, with "disk" I meant the hard drive. The disk-controller is the hardware on the mainboard that controls the communication between CPU and disk(s) and CD-ROM players. The disk controller is part of the southbridge chip, and that is typically soldered on the mainboard. When it's broken - good luck finding a replacement mainboard. A remote possibility is that the southbridge doesn't get enough ventilation - but as your photos exhibited problems at startup, that can be ruled out.

Replacing the hard-drive when it's broken is certainly a real possibility. Any laptop hard-drive will fit, and they're easy and cheap to get by.

Michelle Lyon said:
On the computer/manual/bios dates, this computer has had multiple owners and multiple operating systems in it's lifetime. There's a good chance it's been Frankensteined somewhere along the way. That's why I thought at first that the software might be the issue.
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I was mainly interested to know how old the hard drive is.

Michelle Lyon said:
There was no CD in the CD-ROM.
Click to expand...
OK. But it seems RayG has given the better pointer where to look...
 
ddt said:
Replacing the hard-drive when it's broken is certainly a real possibility. Any laptop hard-drive will fit, and they're easy and cheap to get by.
Click to expand...
Careful: there are two, incompatible flavours of hard drives: the older parallel ATA (PATA) and the newer serial ATA (SATA). Make sure you get the right sort for your laptop. From the looks of your screen shots, it appears to me that you have the older PATA hardware (in which case you won't find anything S-ATA anywhere in the BIOS settings).

I missed that this is a laptop, so my advice about cleaning it doesn't apply - at least not in the same way.

I'd check into the second thing RayG found first of all, though; that sounds pretty close to what you're describing.

On the issue of cleaning: Laptops, actually, are even more prone to overheating than desktop systems, since they have a much more restricted path for air cooling.

However, from the screenshots you've posted, it does appear that this may be a hard drive failure, although it still could be overheating.

Can the problem occur when the laptop is cold (i.e. when it's been sitting turned off for a long time - at least an hour)? If not, how warm is the laptop?

If it does occur when the laptop is cold, then, as other posters have suggested, try running using a "live CD" or DVD (that's a complete Linux O/S you download and burn to a CD or DVD). If it does not hang then, then you can be pretty sure it's a hard drive problem.

If it doesn't occur when the laptop is cold, then take a can of compressed air and blow through the laptop's cooling vents. This may dislodge some of the cruft that is likely to have accumulated. In my case, if I do not periodically clean my laptop's vents, the machine will eventually start overheating (although it shuts down, rather than hanging). (I actually use a vacuum on my laptop, but that may be sufficiently powerful to damage the machine - it's not recommended, from what I understand.)

If it appears to be the hard drive, as mentioned that's fairly easy to replace. You can also get an external USB case to put the old hard drive in; that would allow you to copy any data you have saved on the hard drive (although you should do a backup to CD/DVD or other computer first, since Murphy's Law applies).

Note that if it does hang when running from a live CD, it may be that the whole machine is dying; you can try taking it to a shop to get diagnosed, but a) it's hard to find good repair stores and b) they may not understand Linux anyway.

Anyway, good luck.

ETA: If you do get a new hard drive, also make sure it's a laptop hard drive (2.5"). Desktop hard drives are physically bigger (3.5") and won't fit.
 
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Passed the memory test. I think.

I set it last night and this morning, it was still doing the test, and at the top of the screen it showed "95% passing." Underneath that it was on "test 8". When it got to 100% it started the whole test over again at Test 1! I thought it would stop by itself, not keep testing over and over. I don't know hwo many times it's done this overnight. So I rebooted. (I didn't have to unplug it, just hit ESC as it said at the bottom of the screen.)

If the computer passed the memory test, now what?
 
No I mean seriously. Where do I find a tutorial of some sort on how to use this program? The help-pages in the Ubuntu website are also over my head, and it's because I don't know the terminology. So, where do I learn it?

I'm siding more towards the hard-drive issue also. :) The freezing-up happens regardless of computer temperature, and it's pretty random; some days it never happens and other days it happens nearly twenty times, and it doesn't seem to matter what task I'm doing (internet or office, for example) or what the household temperature is.

Playing a CD or DVD is okay - burned disks of any kind don't play because it isn't the right type of drive to read those, but manufactured (store-bought) CD's, DVD's and CD-ROMs are no problem.

The computer has issues with streaming audio and video from the internet, does that mean anything? Video in particular has a 1-second refresh rate and the video always lags behind the sound. Audio plays choppy. But if it's a video or song that I can download first to the desktop and then play it, there's no problem. I always figured the computer was just too old for processing streaming media, but now I wonder if it's a clue to mainboard problems? Maybe I should replace the HDD first and see?

DDT: I can't find the menu. :(
 
No I mean seriously. Where do I find a tutorial of some sort on how to use this program? The help-pages in the Ubuntu website are also over my head, and it's because I don't know the terminology. So, where do I learn it?

I'm siding more towards the hard-drive issue also. :) The freezing-up happens regardless of computer temperature, and it's pretty random; some days it never happens and other days it happens nearly twenty times, and it doesn't seem to matter what task I'm doing (internet or office, for example) or what the household temperature is.

Playing a CD or DVD is okay - burned disks of any kind don't play because it isn't the right type of drive to read those, but manufactured (store-bought) CD's, DVD's and CD-ROMs are no problem.

The computer has issues with streaming audio and video from the internet, does that mean anything? Video in particular has a 1-second refresh rate and the video always lags behind the sound. Audio plays choppy. But if it's a video or song that I can download first to the desktop and then play it, there's no problem. I always figured the computer was just too old for processing streaming media, but now I wonder if it's a clue to mainboard problems? Maybe I should replace the HDD first and see?

DDT: I can't find the menu. :( I'll keep looking.
 
Lagging on video can be due to any number of things, including the audio settings in the computer and various bits of software. I wouldn't worry about it at the moment; I doubt it's related.

At this point I'd suggest you have three possible lines of inquiry to follow:
  • Changing the boot options as ddt suggested. (You can also look for "File manager - superuser mode" or the like instead of the command line; use it to navigate to /boot/grub, and right click on menu.1st - hopefully there will be an edit option there.)
  • Run from a live CD or DVD. However, you say this machine can't read burnt CDs, which is very odd, but if true means this isn't an option. (I don't know of any CD device that can't read burnt CDs - CD-R, that is. CD-RW sometimes have problems, if I recall correctly.) (If it can't read burnt CDs, though, how did you install Ubuntu in the first place?)
  • Just replace the hard drive. There's no guarantee this will fix it, though; however, it would allow you to get a nice big hard drive (and they're relatively cheap these days). As I said, though, make sure you get a P-ATA (parallel ATA) notebook drive; most places sell S-ATA (serial ATA) now.
 
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OK, I am in the process of installing Ubuntu 7.10 in a virtual machine.

At the moment, though, it appears that:
  • You can find the command window in Applications->Accessories->Terminal
  • ddt's instruction to do:
    Code: 
    $ su
Password:
#
    won't work. Instead, you must do:
    Code: 
    ubuntu@[i]machine[/i]:~ [b]sudo -i[/b]
root@[i]machine[/i]:~#
    (where what you type in is in bold.) It may ask you for a password; that will be your sign-on password.

gedit is available, by the way.

Will update once I get it fully installed.
 
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OK, here's how to fix your boot in Ubuntu 7.10 (click on images to embiggen):

  1. Find Terminal in your menu; it should look like this:
  2. Open it, and type sudo -i (and press return, of course!). It will ask you for your password.
  3. Type gedit /boot/grub/menu.1st. At this point this is what should be in your terminal window:
  4. In the gedit window, find the line # defoptions=quiet splash and add, at the end, irqpoll, like this: (parts of the window cut out to make it smaller and image scaled):
  5. Save the change and exit gedit. This will put you back in your terminal window.
  6. Type update-grub:
  7. Reboot and see what happens.
 
Michelle Lyon said:
The computer has issues with streaming audio and video from the internet, does that mean anything? Video in particular has a 1-second refresh rate and the video always lags behind the sound. Audio plays choppy. But if it's a video or song that I can download first to the desktop and then play it, there's no problem. I always figured the computer was just too old for processing streaming media, but now I wonder if it's a clue to mainboard problems? Maybe I should replace the HDD first and see?
Click to expand...
If it only happens with streaming video in your browser, then it's extremely unlikely to be a hardware problem. More likely it's a combination of the machine being slow (things like Youtube videos are fairly resource-heavy) and possibly not the right hardware-accelerated graphics card driver installed (if it's using a generic VGA/VESA driver then performance will probably be sub-par).

I know it might not be very useful advice, but you might actually be better off installing a copy of Windows XP on it and then disabling the fancy features (themes/visual styles, unused services, etc) for maximum performance. You might find that the other problems go away as well, and even that it performs better than Linux, since modern distributions like Ubuntu/Kubuntu are really designed to run on high-end computers. The kind of computers that could run Vista.

I take it you have run Windows on it before? Did you have the same problems there that you do under Linux? Things like the hard drive error messages you get could be a sign that the HD is having problems just as easily be caused by a driver incompatability with some esoteric hardware in your machine than an actual drive falt. That being said, it is not uncommon for laptop drives to die after a few years due to the heat and other stress they're exposed to.
 
The problem existed before she changed to Ubuntu, although we don't know what OS it was at the time (she hasn't said):
Michelle Lyon said:
Yes. The computer freezes often -the most I've counted in one sitting is 19 times- and the only way to unfreeze it is to unplug it and reboot, which is bad for the system and also just plain irritating when I'm trying to work. It doesn't go black or anything, it just stops, mid-task. And always while I'm on the internet. This is a problem that existed before the change to Ubuntu. ...
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I note something there I overlooked before: always while I'm on the internet ... which might be a network problem (specifically the network module in the laptop).

This simply could be a coincidence, or due to the machine being more loaded when browsing, of course.

Michelle, do you connect to the network wirelessly, or do you plug in?
 
Michelle, sorry for not looking earlier in this thread; grmcdorman, great screenshots!

grmcdorman said:
I note something there I overlooked before: always while I'm on the internet ... which might be a network problem (specifically the network module in the laptop).

This simply could be a coincidence, or due to the machine being more loaded when browsing, of course.

Michelle, do you connect to the network wirelessly, or do you plug in?
Click to expand...

This could also be an IRQ problem; that the network card and the hard-disk controller share the same interrupt. From the manual, the computer has a P-3 processor, Sis 630 ST chipset and SDRAM memory - so it still uses the old-style 16 interrupts. When BIOS settings are not right, they might get the same IRQ assigned :mad:
 
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