{"id":318,"date":"2013-01-20T21:54:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-20T21:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thomas.w-p.me.uk\/blog\/2013\/01\/dell-inspiron-1210-mini-12-dead-hdd-meets-ubuntu-12-04\/"},"modified":"2013-01-20T21:54:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-20T21:54:00","slug":"dell-inspiron-1210-mini-12-dead-hdd-meets-ubuntu-12-04","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thomas.w-p.me.uk\/blog\/2013\/01\/dell-inspiron-1210-mini-12-dead-hdd-meets-ubuntu-12-04\/","title":{"rendered":"Dell Inspiron 1210 (Mini 12), dead hdd meets Ubuntu 12.04"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, my dad’s Dell Inspiron 1210 (Mini 12) finally died after years of service.\u00a0 I had moved it from Ubuntu to Windows a few years ago, but now it was properly dead.\u00a0 Dad’s friend had diagnosed a dead hard disk.\u00a0 And after much work I decided I agreed, though the BIOS was behaving badly.\u00a0 I used Clonezilla to boot to DOS and refresh the BIOS, and this helped, but in the end it was the disk.<\/p>\n

I dismantled the laptop using Dell’s own instructions and found a disk I’d not seen before, a ZIF (zero input force) 1.8″ drive.\u00a0 I’d never met ZIF before and had no clue how to release it.\u00a0 Eldest daughter suggested pull it out, so I did, but I later found on youtube that there is indeed a clamp you release.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I tried a large variety of methods to make a functioning machine.\u00a0 I wanted it to boot of an SD card and bought a 16GB in town.\u00a0 But booting from USB or making an image on the SD card was endlessly frustrating.<\/p>\n

In the end, I sought out (with wife’s help) an old USB DVD.\u00a0 This got me moving forward, and I finally got Mandriva installed, though the display looked awful.\u00a0 Ubuntu 10.10 then worked, and I then thought I would go the whole hog and go for the latest version of Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support).<\/p>\n

Installing was interesting.\u00a0 Booting from a USB gave me weird display issues, but booting from the DVD was fine.\u00a0 I installed to the SD card but the install failed at “install bootloader”.\u00a0 I figured all the files would be in place and I just needed to get a bootloader working.\u00a0 Thanks to it being an SD card it was easy to whack it in my main laptop.\u00a0 Much searching got grub installed , I just had to find where it was mounting (\/media\/:<\/some><\/p>\n

sudo grub-install \u2013root-directory=\/media\/ \/dev\/sdb<\/some><\/code><\/p>\n

This got the sd card in the 1210 to boot to the grub prompt.\u00a0 More searching found three commands to get it booting<\/a>:<\/p>\n

grub> linux (hd0,1)\/vmlinuz root=\/dev\/sda1\u00a0<\/code>
grub> initrd (hd0,1)\/initrd.img\u00a0<\/code>
grub> boot<\/code><\/p>\n

Then I was in and it booted fine – all the files were there.\u00a0 Sadly the display was a complete disaster, a known problem.<\/p>\n

So ctrl+alt+f1 got me a command prompt to get grub working properly, which was as simple as<\/a>:<\/p>\n

sudo grub-install \/dev\/sda<\/pre>\n
sudo update-grub <\/pre>\n
Then I needed to work on the display issues (it was booting to a blank screen or half a screen of garbled nonsense, depending on its mood.\u00a0 Back to ctrl+alt+f1 (the dist-upgrade took a while)<\/p>\n
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade   # this takes a while<\/pre>\n
sudo shutdown now -r        # this reboots<\/pre>\n
<\/pre>\n
The last stage was to follow the Ubuntu wiki for the problematic Intel gma 500 graphics card<\/a>.<\/p>\n
sudo service lightdm restart<\/pre>\n
I was just following the wiki<\/a> by now:<\/p>\n
\n
Ubuntu 12.04<\/h3>\n
<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
With the default settings, Ubuntu 12.04 boots to either a black screen or or top half screen. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
There are several potential solutions: console=tty1<\/strong>, disable splash<\/strong>, or 915 Resolution<\/strong> <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Option 1 – console=tty1<\/h4>\n
<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
Perhaps the easiest method is to use “console=tty1” as a boot option. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n