installing on acer one

unmeilleurreve · 2009-12-28 04:29:45

Hey there.

So I'm not a total newbie and have had some luck with OpenBSD, Fedora, and Mandriva (mostly because, other than BSD, they're easy to install and work with).

However, I came into a problem that I really need to get worked out for a friend.

My friends computer is ridden with viruses because she can't tell when a "you have a virus on your comp" popup is a scam, and this is a really nasty virus that has me totally locked out. I want to do a LAN install onto the Acer One she has, but have no USB drive and can't afford one. I tried to convince Atheros to accept PXE through Fedora to no avail, so I want to give a shot at possibly using Knoppix's PXE LAN server function or try to figure out something with Archlinux, neither of which I have any experience with.

Could somebody possibly tell me how to convince the Atheros Boot Agent to accept a LAN install of *any* Linux distro so that I can wipe this computer and get it running again? It has no cd drive or floppy drive, tho it does have a 4 gb chip slot in the side that I have a chip for but don't know how to access to boot. The only thing I have is an ethernet cable to plug into either another computer or the internet.

Any help would be appreciated.

Chokkan · 2009-12-28 05:08:44

Wait, you can't afford a $5 USB flash memory drive? Surely everyone has at least 10 of the things hanging around. It's really easy, so I think you should give it a try. I followed the wiki and got Arch running on my Aspire One.
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners'_Guide#USB_stick

unmeilleurreve · 2009-12-29 06:50:49

So I got ahold of a flash drive and put a live boot of fedora on the usb. Put it into the acer one, tried to start of the live boot, and got a full page of errors infinitely looping, or what looked like it. By hitting esc I terminated the loop, had a command prompt "boot:", pressed enter, and had the same problem. I'm thinking that this is virus related, seeing as how the only thing I was able to successfully do was access the BIOS, switch the boot order, and then attempt a network boot on the vista network, which failed because I lack the admin info....

Is there a possibility this virus, which shut down access to the user account (when I tried safe mode, I logged in as an admin successfully, only for it to shut down the admin account after the next reboot) has managed to interfere in such a way as to prevent me from installing an OS?

And I'll have to wait for the next semester's loans to get a flash drive. Here's to hoping that's soon.

JuseBox · 2009-12-31 14:42:04

unmeilleurreve wrote:

So I got ahold of a flash drive and put a live boot of fedora on the usb. Put it into the acer one, tried to start of the live boot, and got a full page of errors infinitely looping, or what looked like it. By hitting esc I terminated the loop, had a command prompt "boot:", pressed enter, and had the same problem. I'm thinking that this is virus related, seeing as how the only thing I was able to successfully do was access the BIOS, switch the boot order, and then attempt a network boot on the vista network, which failed because I lack the admin info....
Is there a possibility this virus, which shut down access to the user account (when I tried safe mode, I logged in as an admin successfully, only for it to shut down the admin account after the next reboot) has managed to interfere in such a way as to prevent me from installing an OS?
And I'll have to wait for the next semester's loans to get a flash drive. Here's to hoping that's soon.

Honestly anything could happen. I installed Arch on a netbook (Nokia Booklet 3g) let me tell you what a pain that was. But i kept getting errors and such while trying to install. I first found out i was getting a bad torrent... Corrected that problem. Then I found out that it was a bad drive... In my many years of installing and configuring from windows to linux and just plain computer issues. I have never come across a virus that got into the bios and prevented someone from installing another OS.

BKLive · 2009-12-31 15:17:47

i had a similar issue with fedora recognizing my ethernet card on my hp mini. just use the archiso-core-***.img file and dd it onto your usb stick. boot and shazam. the virus putting a damper on your user account has nothing to do with boot prompts and bios firmware. just make sure the boot order boots the usb stick and it should load into the arch live installer.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-12-28 04:29:45

installing on acer one

#2 2009-12-28 05:08:44

Re: installing on acer one

#3 2009-12-29 06:50:49

Re: installing on acer one

#4 2009-12-31 14:42:04

Re: installing on acer one

#5 2009-12-31 15:17:47

Re: installing on acer one

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