Little Weed’s neighbourhood friend has an Acer Aspire 5742z-4403 that was not functional. It would simply continue to cycle the boot process. He had suspected that his hard disk was bad but did not know how to prove it. I had him bring it to our house. in the end I proved that his hard disk was defective, the machine did boot up with Ubuntu and was fully functional. After connecting to the network with an RJ45, with Firefox we verified the internet worked. Summary: The computer works fine, the hard disk needs replacement.
The Acer Aspire 5742z would boot but even while hitting the f2 or f10 keys would not go into BIOS setup. After hitting the appropriate key it would say “Please wait”, and then cycle the same power up procedure, over and over again. There is a Youtube video describing the problem but not the solution.
You will need: a wired internet connection, Ubuntu 14.04 on a USB stick (Google how to do this), a small Philips (x head) screwdriver.
Here is what to do:
- Remove the battery, remove the hard disk: Disconnect the power cable, turn the laptop over, remove the battery. Under the second plastic cover held down by 2 Philips (X head) screws is the hard disk. Remove the two screws, carefully pry off the cover. You will see the 2.5″ x 4″ hard disk as a metal rectangular box. Slide the box to the left and remove it. You need not replace the cover.
- Turn laptop over right side up. Open the laptop, connect to power and boot, all without the hard disk. Hit f2, which will not get you into setup. Change the boot procedure to boot using the USB stick. Insert the Ubuntu USB stick into an available US port. Boot the laptop, and Ubuntu will come up.
- From the Ubuntu startup screen, select “Load Ubuntu without Installation”. Ubuntu will load. Connect your wired internet cable. Firefox will work. You can try Cheese to ensure your camera works. The network install should show you both wired and wireless connections. The computer works.
Using Ubuntu 14.04 to test this laptop shows that the BIOS and motherboard are good, and that the hard disk needs replacement. A replacement hard disk needs to be 2.5″ wide and 7mm in height. This example also shows how powerful Ubuntu can be as a tool and alternative operating system to Windows.
Update: Mar 01 2015, So we did buy a new hard disk (Seagate ST500LM000 Laptop Thin SSHD 500GB SSHD, 64mb SS cache, 8G NAND flash, $72CAD) and now want to install Win 7. Unfortunately we cannot find the install .ISO. We must purchase this directly from Acer for $20CAD.
