Dell Inspiron 8600 wont stay lit <solved><addendum>

[donvan1]

I recently purchased a used Dell Inspiron 8600 from a local flea market (sporting XP Pro). I decided to make a dual boot-er out of it and used PCLOS 2010.12 KDE live CD to do the job. All went well until trying to use synaptic to update the install. I found Texstars post on updating the sources.list file and got that going. I was able to reload synaptic and get 700 files plus in the Que to be downloaded and installed....here's where my problem began. Upon initiating the download procedure some files were downloaded and bam my wireless hookup disconnect. I restarted the download and again the wireless dropped out after about 20 or so files were downloaded.  It's taking forever to get the updated files downloaded. By the way XP is able to download copious quantities of their fixes without the wireless disconnecting so I don't think it is a hardware issue. Anybody got an idea what is happening to my wireless, and a possible solution to my frustration?  Also my hardwired nic is inoperable so I can't just update that way.

[pags]

There are newer kernels (judging by the number of updates you're seeing) which may provide better hardwrae support (you don't give any specs, so this is conjecture).

Unless you have a big commitment in you Linux install, maybe you would prefer waiting on the new ISO (test3 is out, and it sounds like the final may not be far behind).

[Waldo22]

Donvan1, you might try making a remaster from an existing install that is already updated, and then install from the remaster.  It isn't difficult to do.  Hope this helps. 

[AS]

In addition to Waldo22 suggestion, you can even download the new test3 iso, available here and on other mirrors,

Code: [Select]

http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/pclinuxos/live-cd/test3-pclinuxos-kde-2011.6.iso
http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/pclinuxos/live-cd/test3-pclinuxos-kde-2011.6.md5sum

it's fully updated, including kernels, repo list ... also you can test your Inspiron against it as livecd.  

AS

EDIT: do not forget to check the md5sum of the downloaded iso 

[Old-Polack]

In addition to Waldo22 suggestion, you can even download the new test3 iso, available here and on other mirrors:

Code: [Select]

http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/pclinuxos/live-cd/test3-pclinuxos-kde-2011.6.iso

it's fully updated, including kernels, repo list ... also you can test your Inspiron against it as livecd.  

AS

While the above URL will download the needed iso image, cutting the URL to;

http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/pclinuxos/live-cd

will allow you to see all of the contents of that directory so you can also download the test3-pclinuxos-kde-2011.6.md5sum file to check the accuracy of the iso image download. Download both files (bottom of the Index list) to the same directory, then open a terminal, cd to that directory and run the command;

$ md5sum -c *md5*                <Enter>

I use the terminal attached to Dolphin (F4 key) for this task, so it looks like this;

[AS]

Thank you old-polack,

I have edited my post 

AS

[donvan1]

I'll give all of these ideas a try...I'm just playing around with the Inspiron anyway.  Just a side note... the thing just rebooted itself and I'm beginning to believe that all is not right with the hardware. I had just installed a 6 gig version of linux to the hard drive to start with but while updating I ran out of room (maybe I just made it too small for the system to upgrade and function properly)  This thing may just be for parts to sell on ebay, I just don't know what parts may be bad.

[donvan1]

Well, I downloaded and installed the 2011.6 test3 iso to this machine and all seems to be working (for the moment). Thanks to all once again for all the help and advise.  I'll mark this one as solved (if it turns out to be the hardware that's a whole nother thing).

[donvan1]

Addendum: The power transformer for my dlink wireless router went kuput last night sometime. This may be the true nature of my dropped wireless problem (wont stay lit).