Help! Network Centre Has Disappeared On My Son's Acer Aspire One Netbook

[liz31tt]

Hi All,
        My son has an Acer Aspire One Netbook with a linux o.s. Last night it froze. It has done this several times before, usually I just have to hold the power button down till it switches off... maybe for 4-5 seconds. Restart it, and it's fine, but this time the network centre has disappeared! I can see it in the taskbar when I hover over the tiny pic of the 2 wee pcs, but it's now greyed out. I did a bit of "googling" and I see this is a known problem with this netbook, or even with linux, but my question is, we don't own an external disc drive to run the recovery disc on, is it possible for me to copy it to a flash drive and run it from that on the netbook to fix it?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[socrates]

Yes, it is possible to boot from a flash drive.  Google is your friend.

Here's one site from google: http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm

You can likely find instructions more tailored to your scenario if you google for the OS you're trying to install and "bootable flash drive"

cheers

[liz31tt]

I managed to fix it with the help of google. Thanks!

[socrates]

No problem!

[liz31tt]

Hiya, me again! The flaming thing "died" yet again! Same exact problem, the network centre greyed out on the taskbar. I couldn't get it to work at all, so I've put it into a local pc repair shop a couple of days ago, and I'm still waiting to see what they suggest. 
I asked them about changing the os to xp, and the man said they prob could do that, but I then said I didn't want them to do anything until they phoned me first till I'd see how much it's cost me......... I was thinking I might just get it sorted, sell it as it is, and put the money I get towards a "proper" lappy, i.e one with vista or xp. The guy in the shop told me that they'd got back almost every acer aspire one they'd sold, with the same problem. 
My advice is...... avoid linux, I certainly will anyway!

[socrates]

liz,  I don't think the problem is linux.  Linux is really a great OS, but you have to be familiar with it to use it properly (at least, with most flavors of it).

Most likely the issue you're having is due to poorly coded drivers for your machine- something that acer should have had ready to go since it came with linux.

One thing you could try (I would definitely if I had an aspire 1) is Mac OS 10.5 (leopard) on your aspire.

Check it out here: http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=11796&start=0#p74825

Otherwise, I'd recommend either XP or Windows 7.