Linux on a packard bell

[The Professor]

Hey,

When my windows OS became corrupted a while back, I had to wait for Packard Bell to ship some recovery disks to me. During that time I decided to play around with linux, downloading it on my laptop and installing it onto my PC's hard drive until the recovery disks came. It ran fine off the live CD but when installed it properly I got a bootloader error (something to do with grub). After trying many things to try and fix the error (which didn't do a lot except change the error number so it sounds like I was just making more problems :P) I gave up and waited for the recovery disks to come.

When they came, it turns out linux had screwed up the hard drive and windows couldn't install on it. Since the PC was under warranty I got the hard drive replaced and claimed ignorance, but it turns out packard bell have put something on one of the components in the computer (I don't know which one) which prevents the installation of an operating system other than the one shipped with the PC (and vista if I ever wanted to upgrade) which means no linux.

Anyone have any information on what PB have done to the PC and what I can do to get around it?

Thanks in advance :)

[DaveTaylor]

GRUB was probably disallowed due to the fact the bootloader that packard bell create there own bootloader which is when you see the PB logo appear on the screen you may have to flash the ROM Disk to get around that with a custom firmware (there are several on google you can find) if not find a linux distro and see if it's compatible for that distro for example the openSUSE HCL List:
http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_HCL

[CS-dude]

Hey,

When my windows OS became corrupted a while back, I had to wait for Packard Bell to ship some recovery disks to me. During that time I decided to play around with linux, downloading it on my laptop and installing it onto my PC's hard drive until the recovery disks came. It ran fine off the live CD but when installed it properly I got a bootloader error (something to do with grub). After trying many things to try and fix the error (which didn't do a lot except change the error number so it sounds like I was just making more problems :P) I gave up and waited for the recovery disks to come.

When they came, it turns out linux had screwed up the hard drive and windows couldn't install on it. Since the PC was under warranty I got the hard drive replaced and claimed ignorance, but it turns out packard bell have put something on one of the components in the computer (I don't know which one) which prevents the installation of an operating system other than the one shipped with the PC (and vista if I ever wanted to upgrade) which means no linux.

Anyone have any information on what PB have done to the PC and what I can do to get around it?

Thanks in advance :)

Hey,

I suspect this is probably just a myth as I've known a good number of people to successfully run linux on Packard Bell machines.
Short of having to build totally custom components (which would be extremely expensive for the company) stopping the instillation of an O/s is not really feasible. Especially one as versatile as Linux.
Although I can't really say what your issue was without more detail, I expect it was simply due to some hardware your linux distro doesn't natively support or possible a or a bios incompatibility (though this is more common in dells).

Pretty much all these issues can be sorted with a bit of tweaking and the internet is full of information on how to do so. Just head over to your chosen linux distos support forums and google the make of your pc and normally a nice tutorial put together by people who've already gone through the process can help you iron out the kinks pretty quickly.

Hope that helps a bit,
CS-dude

[Hitman]

My laptop is Packard Bell and it came with Windows XP. I've installed Ubuntu on it a few times, and then re-installed XP without any problem.

[DaveTaylor]

My laptop is Packard Bell and it came with Windows XP. I've installed Ubuntu on it a few times, and then re-installed XP without any problem.
Depends on the age aswell.

[Hitman]

Depends on the age aswell.

Mine's almost two years old, so maybe they only started implementing it recently.

[DaveTaylor]

Mine's almost two years old, so maybe they only started implementing it recently.
wouldn't surprise me actually dell tried it once they brought out there ubuntu range.

[Recursion]

GRUB was probably disallowed due to the fact the bootloader that packard bell create there own bootloader which is when you see the PB logo appear on the screen you may have to flash the ROM Disk to get around that with a custom firmware (there are several on google you can find) if not find a linux distro and see if it's compatible for that distro for example the openSUSE HCL List:
http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_HCL

Thats the BIOS, not bootloader, I can flash my P5K Premium BIOS to show any image I want like that, or just let it show the default ASUS one unless I turn it off.

[iUnknown]

Installing linux would have screwed up the hard drive if it overwrited some of the windows data - obviously that would make windows unrecoverable, only could do a fresh install over it.

If it's giving an grub error, then it's most likely that something went wrong in the install, you could of tried another install and see if that worked. It could also be because it was trying to use some of the windows configuration files, or booting up on the wrong or already damaged hard drive.

[Jdm1]

Hey,

When my windows OS became corrupted a while back, I had to wait for Packard Bell to ship some recovery disks to me. During that time I decided to play around with linux, downloading it on my laptop and installing it onto my PC's hard drive until the recovery disks came. It ran fine off the live CD but when installed it properly I got a bootloader error (something to do with grub). After trying many things to try and fix the error (which didn't do a lot except change the error number so it sounds like I was just making more problems :P) I gave up and waited for the recovery disks to come.

When they came, it turns out linux had screwed up the hard drive and windows couldn't install on it. Since the PC was under warranty I got the hard drive replaced and claimed ignorance, but it turns out packard bell have put something on one of the components in the computer (I don't know which one) which prevents the installation of an operating system other than the one shipped with the PC (and vista if I ever wanted to upgrade) which means no linux.

Anyone have any information on what PB have done to the PC and what I can do to get around it?

Thanks in advance :)
I use Ubuntu on my Packard bell, But when i had to re install XP( use ubuntu now) Ubuntu had Destroyed the hidden sector which makes the recovery disks work, You have to "tatto" the hard drive.

Thats the BIOS, not bootloader, I can flash my P5K Premium BIOS to show any image I want like that, or just let it show the default ASUS one unless I turn it off.
Got to be a Hackintosh guy/

[Tomm]

If people actually pay attention to the installer you can configure it not to overwrite stuff you don't want... People are simply ignorant and keep clicking next.