no optical drive recognised on Acer Timeline 4810T

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MrD

no optical drive recognised on Acer Timeline 4810T

Post by MrD »

I bought this 14" screen single core low energy CPU, long battery life laptop, for a girl I know here studying in the UK for a year. It came with Vista, which works quite well on it, but she is quite experienced with computing and me too and so try to avoid using Vista like the plague. As a £300 laptop it does everything she wants, (although I have to say the speakers aren't too loud or quality.)

http://bit.ly/aEBGq0 <<-- shop selling the laptop, specs aren't specific on the optical drive. It's not here now to see what exact brand/model it is, sorry.

I have tried to install LM10 and Windows 7 on it but neither OS's recognise the optical drive (and inbuilt search for W7 drivers reveals nothing) Is there a recognised issue with the unit in this laptop and LM? She wants LM on it, W7 was the second OS I tried to put on it before I resorted to using the recovery partition to revert to supplied Vista.

What options in LM do we have to identify the drive if I boot off a flashdrive into LM? I can go round and boot it up, get it on the net and try to find drivers, but getting drivers for LM, hmm, I know that's a difficult game.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
rob2uk

Re: no optical drive recognised on Acer Timeline 4810T

Post by rob2uk »

When you switch the laptop on, enter the BIOS settings page (usually F2 during the initial splash screen), and see if the optical drive is listed.

If it isn't, you have a hardware problem. It could be a faulty optical drive, or it could be a motherboard issue.
willie42
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Re: no optical drive recognised on Acer Timeline 4810T

Post by willie42 »

If you have access to a computer you can install linux mint with a USB if your optical drive is not working


see this

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
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ej64
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Re: no optical drive recognised on Acer Timeline 4810T

Post by ej64 »

If the CD isn't the first boot device (you may change that within the BIOS setup) you may also press and hold the "Esc" key while powering on. Usually this leads you to a small boot device menu.
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MrD

Re: no optical drive recognised on Acer Timeline 4810T

Post by MrD »

Okay, I think I mustn't have explained it properly.

1) Optical device is seen in BIOS
2) Optical device seen and driver found for supplied Vista install
3) Able to install W7, LM9 and LM10 via optical drive
4) Optical device not seen and no driver located in W7 or LM9 or LM10 (forgot i had 9 on a usb stick and tried that as last resort)
MrD

Re: no optical drive recognised on Acer Timeline 4810T

Post by MrD »

Update: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/412527

It's apparently an ongoing problem for Ubuntu and W7. Therefore this laptop ought to be added to a list of laptops not to buy if you intend to run Ubuntu for the foreseeable future unfortunately.
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