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Content Tagged with PCLinuxOS + dell

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..  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.

I hit a snag this past week while testing a few beta releases with the latest kernels. I bought an AMD X2 3800 Dell E521 with a Gig of RAM for US $409 and free shipping during a dealnews.com dealfest...I feel I got a good deal. So I’ve been waiting to put my favorite distro, PCLinuxOS on it...waiting for the release of .94 due out sometime this month. In the meantime, Windows XP has been on that computer and I’ve been dual booting distros I’d like to try.

The snag I hit came when booting into just about any 2.6.X environment in Linux...the mouse would be fine one minute, and then a few minutes into things the mouse would freeze. This is a USB Logitech mouse...and I found it odd that it would freeze up but the printer (HP PSC 1210v) would work just fine.

After a bit of research when pointed in the right direction of the kernel developer for PCLinuxOS, I came to realize that I wasn’t alone. Many on Ubuntu’s forums and also Linuxquestions, and Linuxforums had reported the same problems...most without any resolution. The good news is that I found a resolution to my problems

Update the BIOS! I did a major forehead smack when it was the last thing I thought of when it should have been the first. After updating the BIOS to the latest and greatest version from dell.com, I was back in business with no freezes of my USB Mouse. Hopefully, if you also run a Dell E521, you won’t bash your head repeatedly against the wall like I did.