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I got a little netbook yesterday (an Acer Aspire One) for schoolwork and read in numerous reviews Ubuntu was a must. I dove into it blindly and downloaded 12.04 LTS and though I admit it's faster than before, I have no idea how it works yet and was stupid enough to get rid of the Windows 7 Starter that was on there before completely.

I can see myself getting used to the rest of Ubuntu, but the main issue is that it seems to have eaten all of my drivers and I don't know where to get any Ubuntu compatible ones. Any video at all is jilty and kind of creepy and any audio is very distorted and REALLY creepy.

I understand that this is a tiny $150 typing and light web use school device I'm talking about, but I feel really stupid making the poor thing worse than it was before and not knowing what to do about it.

Does anyone know how to install graphics/sound drivers? Or, alternatively, does anyone know where I can get a copy of Windows 7 Starter. I can see myself liking this if the problems are fixable, but if not I still have the product key and would be able to tackle the problem by myself with that.

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It might help massively to link to the specific model, or better yet, post the output of lshw or dmidecode. – Journeyman Geek Sep 27 '12 at 3:25
You can always contact the manufacturer to obtain a copy of the Windows 7 recovery DVDs. – izx Sep 27 '12 at 8:17
You have to provide us more info about your hardware for us to help you. Or else, this question will most probably be closed as Not a real question. – jokerdino♦ Sep 27 '12 at 9:36
See this question for what hardware information might possibly be needed and then edit your question adding the information. – jokerdino♦ Sep 27 '12 at 9:37

closed as not a real question by Anwar, mikewhatever, izx, jokerdino♦, Mik Sep 27 '12 at 10:11

It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.

1 Answer

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Ubuntu is probably fixable on the netbook, but will probably take a little bit of work.

First, to see about video drivers, go to the cogwheel in the upper-right, click it and you'll see a menu. One of the items will be System Settings; open it. You'll see a window with a number of items, one of which will be Additional Drivers. If you open it, you are likely to see a screen that identifies a video driver, but that might say that the driver is currently inactive (or not yet activated, or something like that), but you will be able to push a button to activate the driver. Go ahead and do that. I don't recall if you will need to reboot at that point, but it'll tell you if you need to do that.

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thank you so much for the speedy reply, I really appreciate it! I tried doing what you did but when i go to Additional Drivers it says "No proprietary drivers are in use on this system". There are no options, all fields are blank and the Enable button is faded. – Ari Sep 27 '12 at 3:26
DO you know what Drivers do you need?, What graphics card do you have, etc? – Uri Herrera Sep 27 '12 at 3:28
@UriHerrera I just looked all over the box and instructions and tried my best to check through the netbook itself and it seems like there somehow isn't one? My friend said it must be the sound/graphics cards but there's no mention having one at all. I'm not sure what else could be causing the problems, though... – Ari Sep 27 '12 at 3:45
Add the output of the command lshw into your question, Open the terminal press CTRL+T and type it, then copy the output into pastebin.com and add the to your question. – Uri Herrera Sep 27 '12 at 3:50
@UriHerrera pastebin.com/9QekeqqJ – Ari Sep 27 '12 at 4:44

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