Acer Aspire One Boot issues

[FiveTimes]

I've been handed an acer aspire by a friend as it "doesn't work".

It has a linux distro on it - Linpus I think

However after booting up the display is just thickish black and white horizontal lines and nothing else.

Any clues on best way to rectify this ?

[Spacecadet]

have you tried attaching an external monitor?

[FiveTimes]

have you tried attaching an external monitor?

Not yet.

I did see it booting fine on Friday as I had to do several live updates to it in order to get messenger to work.
After the updates everything was fine.

It was only when I was taking it back to friends last night that the issue with striped display happened.

[Churchill]

Not yet.

I did see it booting fine on Friday as I had to do several live updates to it in order to get messenger to work.
After the updates everything was fine.

It was only when I was taking it back to friends last night that the issue with striped display happened.

Drop it again, you may just "fix" it...

[fullyautomatix]

Have you tried bleeding the radiator ?

[Spacecadet]

Not yet.

I did see it booting fine on Friday as I had to do several live updates to it in order to get messenger to work.
After the updates everything was fine.

It was only when I was taking it back to friends last night that the issue with striped display happened.

was it left in the car boot over night? might have picked up some condensation

[FiveTimes]

was it left in the car boot over night? might have picked up some condensation

No, it was working fine upto the point of me powering it on at friends house !

[xoggoth]

Got problems like that on an ancient laptop that seem to be temperature related. Stripey screen when cold ok when warm.

[administrator]

Could well be display config mangled somehow. Do you see the BIOS on boot or is that when the dispay goes wonky? If you get clear BIOS screen then mangled O/S and we may be able to help you. If mangled pre-BIOS then machine mangled and a bit harder to sort...

[FiveTimes]

Could well be display config mangled somehow. Do you see the BIOS on boot or is that when the dispay goes wonky? If you get clear BIOS screen then mangled O/S and we may be able to help you. If mangled pre-BIOS then machine mangled and a bit harder to sort...

I can see the BIOS settings fine, although I am going to try and update the bios tonight to a new version.
The current one doesn't charge the battery - so I have downloaded the latest version and will try booting from usb this evening.