After installing Ubuntu 11.10 on an old Inspiron 2200, the neighbor asked me to update an old HP ze2000 for his 5 year old twins; Windows XP was hosed and the Install disk wasn’t available, so we installed Ubuntu. The install went so smoothly, I decided to update the old Laptop, used by COPC Tucson, to improve performance.
Following the same steps as the first two installations didn’t work in this case. The Dell Inspiron 2650 was a bit lower tech and had a few issues that weren’t present with the Dell Inspiron 2200 or the HP ze2000.
The first problem was that the Live install for Ubuntu 11.10 locked up with a flashing curser. Easily fixed by holding the shift key down while booting, then selecting F6 and setting acpi=off. Once the O/S was installed, nothing but a blank screen loaded; after searching Google for a while I decided to go with an answer I found that suggested using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.
After downloading and burning a new ISO to bootable DVD for trial or install, an entirely new issue presented itself — no keyboard or mouse; this lead to more searching and head scratching, but was finally resolved by simply removing the battery. As with many Dell systems, the battery in this Inspiron 2650 was toast.
A battery is being ordered from Amazon for $26 (price on date of this post); once it arrives, Ubuntu 11.10 will be tested from a live CD in case the acpi issue was also related to the dead battery — updates to follow.
Success! — Battery installed Ubuntu loaded up and runs correctly, however the battery needed to be charged first
Thanks for sharing your experience, I got Ubuntu 11.10 installed perfectly after setting acpi=off on my old Inspiron 2650.
Couldn’t have done it without ya