And another thing, ACER customer support obviously needs some training! Although they told me that dual-boot was not supported with their hardware, I have Linux-mint and Win7 successfully installed on the laptop using just standard installation procedures.

CONFIRMATION

Went back to the shop today to see if they still had the original laptop I bought or if they had already sent it in for "repair". Luckily the laptop was still there. We removed the battery, pressed the power butto a few times to discharge any residual power, connected the power supply without battery and hey presto, it booted like a charm. I got my original laptop, the shop got their show unit back, and the Linux community has learnt a little........... happy campers all round!

This post can now be closed..

So,

even though I upgraded the BIOS, I read a couple of posts on the net on different forums, that people had had problems resetting the BIOS, and so had removed the CMOS battery for 30 minutes or so. I figured I would give this a try.

I removed the power cable and the main laptop battery and proceeded to remove all the screws on the base of the unit. Once I started to see circuit boards it became apprent that the only way I was going to get to the CMOS battery would be to break a "garantee seal" which would have invalidated the garantee.

I therefore put all the screws back in, replaced the main battery and voila. Started and booted to desktop within 20 seconds!!!

It seems that since the Linux install over the WIN7, some memory was cluttered up somewhere which could only be cleared by disconnecting the laptop from all power sources, including the main battery.

All that hassle, and all I really needed to do was to take out the battery for 10 minutes.

Is swearing allowed in this forum????

Thanks all
Martin
:cheer:

Friends,

thanks for your support on this issue. It seems that I have found the problem. it is so simple that it is almost embarrasing to post here, considering all the hassle I went through with this.

Everyone who wants to know the solution say aaaiiiiiiii..................

HHHHHEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPP!

What I feared has happened. even now with the replacement laptop exactly he same! At least we know now it is not a hardware problem, and we know what has NOT worked up untill now.

UBUNTU 10.04 installed no problem, all hardware was recognised. Like a good boy the first thing I did was to look for updates which of course many were found. There seemed to be a problem however installing the up-to-date kernel and the system told me to reboot. This is then when the problem started.

So, the symptoms we know already, what can I do?

Regards
Angry in Austria

[/quote]

I take you installed linux again and everything worked ok, right?

:)[/quote]

Na, gonna stick with a decent windows OS.......... NOT! :laugh:

Am in the process of burning the W7 recovery dvds now, and soon as this is done ill be putting Mint on there.

Will keep you informed.

Hi All,

after the fun and games I had with my laptop, i brought it back to the shop yesterday and it was changed. Now it raises for me the question, are there Linux distributions which have proved to be more suitable for the new i range of prozessors or should it not make any difference? I have an i5.

Regards
Martin

so, the situation is now out of my hands. brought the laptop back to the store today and it was agreed that it must be a hardware fault. got a new laptop :o)

Shame I wont ever find out what the real problem was. Thanks for your help anyways.

Regards
Martin

so here are a couple of links to stories of similar problems, both seem to be connected to the PSU:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=1726597
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/158497-12-sn41g2-strange-power-behaviour

And the windows installation hanging problem:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/2064-63-windows-install-hangs-starting-windows-screen

Regards
Martin

Hi again all,

problem is solved. I have a new ASUS X5DIJ and I solved the problem following exactly these instructions here:

http://radu.cotescu.com/2009/11/05/flipped-images-ubuntu-webcam/

regards
Martin