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    Can't use Windows any more (Aspire 1691)

    Discussion in 'Acer' started by J2R, Feb 23, 2008.

  1. J2R

    J2R Newbie

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    I have a situation at the moment with my Aspire 1691 WLMi which rather puzzles me. A while back (after the warranty had expired!) some glitch occurred while running XP, which caused my laptop to crash. When it started up again, I couldn't get XP running again because I kept running into a blue screen of death telling me of a problem with ati2dvag.dll being in an infinite loop. I thought the DLL must be corrupted so I replaced it, with no joy. I then did a system restore - no joy. I formatted the hard drive and reinstalled XP - no joy. I did the same, but with Windows 2000 - no joy. I tried installing different drivers - the Omega ones, etc. (the machine uses an ATI X600 Mobility Radeon) - but still could not get a Windows installation running at its native resolution. The only way I could use it was with the default VGA driver, unaccelerated and running at 1024x768.

    A hardware problem, then, with the graphics card? But here's the odd part. I was able to install Ubuntu Linux, with KDE, and get it to run perfectly with accelerated video at 1280x800. Having done that, I was able to install VirtualBox and run a Windows XP virtual machine at full screen size, just as if I was running XP natively, without the BSOD.

    Does this make any sense to anybody? I am wondering if there is some aspect of the video which Windows uses 'out of the box' but which Ubuntu doesn't. If so, I wonder whether there is some way of getting it not to use that, so it behaves like Linux does. The problem is that I have to have an ATI driver installed and working before I can fiddle with options, and I'm getting a BSOD before I get to that point.
     
    J2R, Feb 23, 2008
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  2. Arki

    Arki Super Moderator

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    Have you tried different ATI drivers?
     
    Arki, Feb 23, 2008
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  3. J2R

    J2R Newbie

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    Yes, I've tried all the drivers I can get my hands on. Maybe there are others raround now I could try, but certainly you'd think doing a full system restore would sort the problem, unless it's hardware related. But if it's hardware, how come Ubuntu runs just fine on it? Weird.
     
    J2R, Feb 23, 2008
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  4. J2R

    J2R Newbie

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    I tried the latest ATI Catalyst driver and I get the same situation as with the Omega drivers - no BSOD but simply a black screen.
     
    J2R, Mar 17, 2008
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  5. penrynTech

    penrynTech Notebook Guru

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    I'm afraid that it's a GPU fault. Ubuntu uses the VGA card differently to XP. Something on boot sends it spinning and makes it fall over. Not alot you can do with it i'm afraid as CPU is soldered onto the mainboard for that model. The only thing to really suggest is to continue using Ubuntu and don't push it too hard as it could cause a complete failure
     
    penrynTech, Mar 17, 2008
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