By now, I feel pretty punch drunk. My Dell E521 has been kicking my beehind for quite a few days as I’ve tried to install PCLinuxOS 2007 Final.
I’ve used all the boot options in my arsenal and couldn’t stop it from freezing after 30 minutes.
I turned off ACPI, turned it on, turned on APM, turned it off. Disabled every service I could possibly disable, then turned them on. No matter what I did, it seemed that it always froze at the wrong time…that time being just after I blogged that I had solved the problem (see previous post). Actually, can you just ignore that previous post? 😉
Thanks to a comment by reader jsnyder, I was told of an unreleased version of the Dell E521 BIOS (version 1.1.8). After a BIOS flash, PCLinuxOS Final ran all weekend long without a single freezeup. Go figure 🙂 Where can you get this unreleased BIOS from? Why, it’s rather simple…the Dell public download ftp server of course!
Connect to: ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/bios/
Look for: DME521-010108.EXE
Install and enjoy your Linux desktop not freezing! Thanks again to jsnyder for pointing out that there was another version of the BIOS out there. My PCLinuxOS 2007 E521 thanks you (as do I). Hopefully, this will also help others out there that are having similar problems.
Carpet has been pulled on this with what sounds to me to be a dubious reason.
Dell Tech site:
Dell Dimension System BIOS
Release R154570 is no longer available.
Reason: Demoted as requested by DM and Quality due to high impact on BIOS corruption in the field due to windows flash.
Any chance anybody has the file in question ?
Thanks !
I have this machine and declare it rubbish.
I was able to get this working back in June 07, and it has been fine since.
So it can’t be all that bad !