Problem: Acer Aspire A515-54G Bluetooth Quit Working

Explanation: A recent driver update available through Microsoft Windows Update does not seem to support this hardware well.

Solution: Rollback the current driver to the previous driver.

Step 1: Search Windows for Device Manager

2: Select the bluetooth adapter under “bluetooth”

3: Double-click the device to see properties

4: Click the “driver” tab in the properties window

5: Click “Roll Back Driver” and follow the on-screen instructions

After rolling back, you may need to restart. I suggest a “cold” restart. Click the Windows button and hold down the SHIFT key while you click on “Shutdown” or “Restart.”

This should resolve this issue on this particular laptop model.

Problem: A Motorola phone (specifically the W755 and similar series) will not charge on USB either ever, or after reformatting a computer. Applies to many Motorola phones, including Motorola Android, Motorola OS, Motorola Linux OS, Motorola iDEN, Motorola Symbian/UIQ, Motorola Windows Mobile® and Motorola i-mode devices, Motorola XOOM™ tablet.

Cause: Older Motorola phones will not charge while they have a data connection active. If you were able to charge before and reformatted, you probably no longer have the correct drivers that would allow your phone to charge.

Solution: Download the Motorola Helper Software so that the phone will know to charge rather than just use a data connection. (Note from the author: I know this sounds preposterous, but Motorola phone USB charging is messed up stuff).

Link to software: http://www.motorola.com/consumers/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=bda09ec8009a0210VgnVCM1000008806b00aRCRD
Download the MotoHelper – this will choose the correct driver for you and get you going faster.

Problem I: Unable to locate a driver for Citizen GSX140 printers (24-pin color DOT Matrix printer)
Solution: GSX 140 printers, as well as many other dot-matrix printers, actually emulate Epson printers. You can use the Epson LQ 2550 driver for the GSX140 and many other similar Citizen printer series. All features (including color printing) will still work.
Problem II: I can’t find the Epson LQ 2550 printer driver

Cause: Windows does not automatically include the driver and requires it to be obtained via. Windows Update.

Solution: Go to the Control Panel “Add Printer” wizard.
If you are installing a network printer, do not select “Use a Network Printer”.
Complete the installation as if you were going to install a local printer  on the LPT port (selecting any port at this stage is fine).
When you reach the driver selection screen, press the “Windows Update” button. Window will begin downloading hundreds of legacy drivers — included is the Epson LQ 2550. This will take awhile on slower connections and cannot be paused or stopped.
If you were installing the printer as LPT or as USB with an LPT converter, you can continue. If you were meaning to install a Network Printer, cancel the wizard  and start it again for network printers. You can now select the LQ 2550 driver under “Epson” manufacturer printers.

An alternative is to use the Epson LQ Series 2 (136) driver, but this will only support 180×180 printing in black and white.

Reworded: For Citizen GSX 140 series Printers, use the Epson LQ 2550 driver.
If you need the Epson LQ 2550 driver, but it is not available, use the Epson LQ Series 2 (136) driver which will not support high resolution or color (also works for Citizen GSX 140)
Many other dot-matrix printers use the same drivers.

One important note! The LQ Series 2 (136) driver will not support color printing or high resolution printing. We are currently investigating as to why our trial run of this yielded only black & white printing which may have been from a variety of causes (wrong driver, our CUPS server, the Windows computer connected, etc).

Problem description: For a brief moment after typing, the mouse on a laptop using a trackpad is suddenly disabled.
Hardware affected: Most notably Synaptics mouses (using Synaptics drivers and software)
Operating systems: Both Windows and Linux

Cause: Synaptics mouse software has a featured called “Palm Check” which, in order to help the user avoid accidentally clicking on things while typing, disables the mouse while you are typing and for about a second after you stop typing. While this feature may be useful in an office environment, a user who is gaming or switching back and forth between applications frequently may find this incredibly frustrating.

Solution:
Easy (all software changes, no changes to hardware).
In Windows, press Start and type “Mouse” to find the mouse control program (or go to Control Panel> Hardware and Sound> and click “Mouse” under Devices and Printers.)

Click the last tab titled “Device Settings” from within the mouse configuration window. Select the device (Usually “Synaptics Touchpad”) and click “Settings”.

From here, it varies from various versions of the Synaptics driver and software versions. Search around for options related to “Palm Check” (usually under Pointing> Sensitivity> “Palm Check”).

While you cannot fully disable Palm Check, you can set it to its minimum setting which is sufficient for most users. You can also simply lower the value, as it is a useful feature to have with a touchpad (though it infringes on productivity at its default settings).

In Linux (Specifically Ubuntu), “go to [1] System > Preferences > Mouse > Touchpad and uncheck “Disable Touchpad while Typing”” (from here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticsTouchpad)
[1] You should also be able to hit the Super Key and search for “Mouse”.
Different Synaptics drivers in Linux may yield different results.

If this helped you, please comment and let us know (and let us know if it didn’t as well!)

Question: “Where can I find the Citizen GSX 140 printer manual?”

Answer:

Here: http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/files/whitepapers/ultimate_printer_manual/printers/mczg14.htm

Problem: WiFi in Fedora 15 is not working very well or with limited functionality with a Broadcom BCM4311 wireless device, or a Dell E1505 laptop (which uses a BCM4311 wireless card).The wireless may work for a period of time, but eventually cuts out and refuses to connect until you either restart the computer, or disable and re-enable the wireless card.

Cause: Fedora selects the wrong driver for this particular card automatically.

Solution: Install the alternative driver.

Tip: To make this process faster, make sure Fedora is up-to-date BEFORE following these instructions.

To begin: Make sure you have access to a wired connection (ethernet connection). Partly through the process of changing the driver, you will not be able to use WiFi and it will become completely inaccessible.

First, double-check that your card is in-fact BCM4311. Open a new terminal window, and run the command

lspci

(You may need to be root to run this command).

The results should include something that looks like this:
0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN (rev 01)
^^This first series of numbers may be different on your computer.

If you have a BCM4311, proceed. If this is not your card, do not follow these directions.

Make sure you are connected to the Internet.
Open a new terminal window, and run:

su
yum install akmod-wl

This will install the akmod-w1 driver. After the installation finishes, reboot your computer.
Once you have logged in again, you will have lost access to your wireless. This is because akmod-w1 installs a kernel that breaks wireless on Dell systems. We need to update the kernel in order to access wireless again.

Open the Software Update utility in Fedora. (Press the Windows/Super key and type “Software Update” to access this program).

The update for the kernel should appear. Install the update, and restart again.

The WiFi should now work.

For more information, check out this forum post:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=1487122
This post contains other drivers you can also try.

Related articles

• Ubuntu 11.04 BETA I Functionality on Dell E1505 (winfix.zylblog.com)
• Ubuntu 11.04 BETA I fails to use Broadcom wireless card (winfix.zylblog.com)

Image via Wikipedia

The answer is quite simple: A hard drive has moving parts.

In order for a hard drive to access or write data, it must be spinning (usually at 7,200 RPMs for a desktop computer, and 5400 for a laptop.)
Then, an arm must seek the track on the drive that you want to read or write to.

A hard drive only has one arm with a head attached to it. It can only read and write one track at a time.

Though the read and write access time of a drive is only a few miliseconds, there are thousands of seeks that must be performed to start a computer. And hundreds to open a file on a fragemented drive.

Drives such as Solid State have no moving parts, thus they are considerably faster.

Did this help you? Tell us how! Comment below.

EDIT: 06/22/11. Ubuntu 11.04 has been released and these issues have, for the most part, been fixed.

The Dell E1505 can run Ubuntu 11.04 BETA I, but not out of the box.

Users with Broadcom wifi cards are likely to have problems as well as users with nVidia GeForce Go 7300 graphics cards.

Fixes are available for both likely problems.

The problems:
A WiFi device will not be detected
Unity 3D will simply freeze up after login.

Description: Ubuntu 11.04 BETA I seems to not detect or acknowledge the presence of any wifi card, wifi is not listed on the wireless menu, and ifconfig/iwconfig do not list a wlan device. Commands such as   rfkill list  show the device, but as blocked.
WiFi light will not turn on with key command, either.

Problem: Once again, the Ubuntu team has provided incorrect default drivers for Broadcom devices. These directions will only help you to  gain some functionality from your wifi device. The wifi may not work to its full potential.

Solution: Navigate to Additional Drivers. To get here from Ubuntu 11.04, click on the power button on the desktop in the upper right hand corner, and click “System Settings”. Locate “Additional Drivers” under the Hardware category.

Remove/deactivate the Broadcom STA Wireless driver. Restart the computer.

Log in, and open a terminal. Then run:

sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer

Restart the computer again.

You should notice that your WiFi light has turned on.Wireless can not be enabled and disabled from the Network menu (next to the system clock).

A note: Usability of the card may be poor due to having “sketchy” drivers installed. The particular driver installed will work for most Broadcom cards, but may not offer the full features your card may typically have.

Please comment and share how well this worked for you (if at all) and any other solutions you may come across.

Details: Ubuntu 11.04 BETA I fails to allow use of Unity Desktop when a nVidia GeForce Go 7300 is used.

Problem: The new nVidia driver introduced with Ubuntu 11.04 is not actually compatible with said card.

Solution: Simple.
First, to get into some kind of desktop, get back to the Ubuntu login screen (you can NOT get the desktop to un-freeze, you may have to force shutdown or do some other complicated things).
At the bottom of the login screen, select a different desktop to use. The drop-down box is set to Ubuntu as default. Instead, select “Ubuntu Classic (no effects)” and log in.

Your desktop should now load with the traditional Gnome interface. Don’t walk away just yet, as full functionality is just a moment away:

Open (under System) “Additional Drivers”, find whichever nVidia driver is installed and remove/deactivate it. Restart your computer.

Login and open Additional Drivers again, and install/activate the driver named “Expiremental 3d Support for  nVidia cards”. Restart your computer, and change the desktop in the login-screen drop-down box back to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 11.04 with the Unity desktop should load successfully.

Please comment if this post worked for you, as well as other solutions you may have found.