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My old laptop, an Acer Aspire running Windows Vista Basic Edition, will not boot up. When I power it on, I see a blank black screen 90% of the time (but it 'lights up' if you know what I mean, the pixels are on). Sometimes, but very rarely, it will boot up and go into a log-in screen or windows memory diagnostics - in both cases, I can not control the keyboard & mouse to do anything (even w/ USB keyboard/mouse).

Now what I am asking is if I were to put Ununtu/or another distro on a CD or USB flash-drive, could I boot my PC off that (and then just erase the Windows partition)? I suppose this might be a 'case-by-case' type of question, but anything helps.

By the way, this is not urgent, just recently (after the PC stopped working), I upgraded to a new Windows 8 laptop.

Thanks.

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  • At least you could have the Vista installation disk somewhere. Try to boot from an alternate media (either the Vista disk or an Ubuntu LiveCD) and check if either the current Vista installation or your laptop is to blame.
    – Doktoro Reichard
    Commented Apr 13, 2014 at 15:37
  • @DoktoroReichard I believe the PC came pre-installed w/ Vista (I got it refurbished), so I don't have a Vista disk... I am going to try booting from Live Ubuntu CD - the .ISO is downloading right now! Thanks :)
    – just_a_programmer
    Commented Apr 13, 2014 at 15:51

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If the laptop's hardware works, then yes, you can use a cd/usb drive linux to erase the hard drive.

If there are hardware issues with the input devices, you could try plugging an external mouse/keyboard.

Worst case, you could remove the hard drive, and use another computer to erase it.

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  • the live cd worked, thanks! however, now ubuntu won't recognize my laptop's mouse and keyboard or my usb keyboard... any ideas?
    – just_a_programmer
    Commented Apr 13, 2014 at 17:28

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