Report Blog Entry
My family has this old Dell computer, and I wanted to take it apart to exam it, but I decided first to try turning it on. It was able to turn on, but it kept opening up a troubleshoot menu and it seemed that the problem was with Windows and not any of the hardware. I ran a diagnostics test and the only thing it said was that there was no hard drive, but that wasn't really important. I talked to my tech teacher, and after I brought up Linux he suggested for me to use a usb to download Linux onto the pc. (He also talked about working with someone in my class or the STEAM club to turn this into a project and even give out Linux to ppl on like usbs I think, but I didn't want to be doing all of that.) When I went to plug in the usb it looked like there was only an eSATA port cuz it didn't fit into any of the ports, but a few days later I showed my dad and he saw there was a usb port and it was just blocked because there was an old usb that was broken and stuck inside. Then, when I tried to download Linux, I got stuck at a loading screen, and when I looked it up, it appeared to be a common issue. I tried re-downloading it onto the usb and trying again, but then it would loop through the computer's loading screen and the bootloader's loading screen. I then switched the computer from using legacy boot to uefi, and then it worked. I'm gonna be honest I don't know why it did, but whatever. I ended up downloading it twice onto the old pc cuz another thing went wrong. The only thing that doesn't seem to be working is the wifi but my dad might have the wifi disabled on that computer, so I'll ask him to turn it on tomorrow cuz he's alseep rn.
Update: It was my dad who had the wifi disabled for this computer and thankfully not a problem with the computer itself :D
Comments
Displaying 2 of 2 comments ( View all | Add Comment )
ManaficentRose
wow, I'm not so tech savvy but that's great ! Might switch to Linux
Yayy, if ya ever do switch to Linux it is best to do a bit of research to find out what distro will work best for you ^^
by panc★ke; ; Report
Ok ty ^^
by ManaficentRose; ; Report
_Rebel_
What Linux distro? Also if the computer is really super old it might not have any wifi card or built in wifi in the motherboard so you might have to buy a wifi card or wifi adapter or just use Ethernet my PC is old and I have mint on it but doesn't use wifi so I slapped on a AliExpress wifi adapter and used a wifi extender with Ethernet later on
I used lubuntu and it’s not thattt old, and I’m pretty sure my dad just has the WiFi turned off cuz years ago when my siblings and I would use it, it connected to the WiFi not problem
by panc★ke; ; Report
Hmm could be a driver issue maybe my PC was SUPER slow with its drivers it's still slow now but it's bare able because Ethernet I use mint not lubuntu some distros handle drivers differently so idk
by _Rebel_; ; Report
Well turns out i was right abt my dad turning off the wifi all those years ago. In fact, im replying on that old PC right now! But still, thanks for trying to give me some help!
by panc★ke; ; Report