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Saturday, April 21, 2007

Can't Get Feisty to Install?

Readers with 2.1 or 2.4 BIOS have been reporting that they are unable to get Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04 to install on their 1501s. The simple solution is to downgrade your BIOS back to 1.7. When you start up your PC there is a giant Dell splash screen. Right under it you can find your bios version. Get older BIOS from Dell's support website HERE

I will caution that if you are not comfortable with possibly ruining your laptop and turning it into a useless brick do not attempt to flash your BIOS.

REMEMBER YOU HAVE TO HAVE YOUR LAPTOP PLUGGED IN WHEN FLASHING.

edited by pHreaksYcle

20 comments:

Phasmatis de Apparatus said...

Hmmm... What would the side-effects of that be? What BIOs functionality would one lose by reverting to 1.7?

redDEAD said...

I dont know I've only used 1.7, 2.1 and 2.4 were specifically released for Vista. The only thing I know on the Linux end is vmware runs better on the new bios in Edgy.

Unknown said...

Yesss, this fixed my problem. If you using 2.1 or 2.4 it's definitely worth downgrading to 1.7, just remember to pray while your flashing :) Now I just wish the bios would let me tweak advanced settings like IRQs and such.....

Unknown said...

BIOS 2.3 works, I installed Kubuntu 7.04 yesterday and didn't run into serious problems.

Well, I'll see if there will be any disadvantages or problems in the next days and weeks, didn't configure Beryl nor WLAN so far.

Unknown said...

What method did you use to roll back the bios?

redDEAD said...

there are two options: doing it in Windows with an .exe and in DOS with a floppy disk.

I have had 1.7 since I bought the 1501, so I haven't tired either. I would probably use the Windows method.

PurplE said...

my bios version is 2.1,
I install feisty successfully,
but there's session logout problem:
when I logout or switch user,
the screen just go dark and I can't take it back.

bios version problem?
any other face the same?

redDEAD said...

purple,
I get that same error, with bios 1.7
I have no idea how to fix it though.

Any help?

PurplE said...

It seems that this problem appears all inspiron 1501 machine.
I get the answer from the forum
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=424099&highlight=inspiron+logout+problem

went to
System-->Administration-->Login Window
and placed a checkmark in Restart the Xserver with each login
applied and rebooted the machine

Sylvain said...

I haven't got any problem with my Inspiron 1501 and Feisty, nothing (except wifi of course).

Anonymous said...

hello.

Does anyone here know if the problem occur in other distros as well?
Moreover, does it occur in older Ubuntu releases? (Edgy)

If it doesn't, is it possible to just install Edgy and then upgrade to Fiesty from there?

Thanks

Marcelo said...

I have BIOS 2.4.1 and it installed fine and works out of the box!

Unknown said...

I have Vista and my laptop came shipped with version 2.1. I was able to downgrade my bios to 1.7 with no apparent problems to Vista. Downgrading was a major PITA though because my vista kept crashing when I tried to do it through windows. I eventually got so fed up I installed XP on a partition just so I could downgrade the BIOS.

I haven't noticed any issues with Vista, although I barely ever use it anymore so keep that in mind.

Unknown said...

So help me out here guys, the Dell bios update file tells me it won't run in DOS mode. Of course Dell tells me to put it on a DOS floppy disk (which this computer doesn't have, and can't take 3 MB files anyway)... and they tell me that's all I can do.

So since I've completely dumped Windows, is there anything I can do? Note, I've tried this so far only on FreeDOS, but the executable itself is flagged for Windows 32 bit mode only.

Cory said...

I've been trying to get Feisty to install for a while now but I keep getting the same error. It can't install the kernel on my hard drive (when installing the base system). I've formatted the partition as ext3 and I've tried both amd64 and i386 alternate install cds. I'm using BIOS 2.4, so would that be the problem?

redDEAD said...

probably is. use bios 1.7

redDEAD said...

Luke get a copy of xp install it, downgrade your bios, then install ubuntu. its about 3 hours of work but its worth it

Cory said...

I changed my bios to 1.7 and I get the same problem :(

I checked the virtual console and it tells me that there were failed dependencies when it was trying to install the linux-generic kernel :S

redDEAD said...

Cory

A couple of weeks ago to recently the feisty install discs were screwed up. They had missing dependences. Download the iso again. All should be fixed.

Haider Raza said...

I didn't want to dispose off the Dell Utilities partition and the recovery partition, so I used GParted to resize the partition that had Vista on it and freed up 10GB. Then I inserted the Ubuntu Feisty CD in the drive and selected the second option when it asked me about guided partitioning (the option said something about Guided: use the free space). After ubuntu installed, everything came up fine and it had recognized Vista and now I can dual boot too. I hope this is somehow useful.