Installation (troublesome) on ASUS X200MA

The factory version of the ASUS X200ma has an old BIOS version, around 3.x if I’m not mistaken. To boot from a flash drive, you have to update the BIOS first. However, be careful: if it fails, it will brick. You can look up the steps for updating the BIOS on Google. Mine has version 502, which was the latest version when I checked.

The problem occurs when I want to install Linux, Crunchbang and also Slackware. Both can boot fine (Booting was done with a Flash drive, haven’t tried using a DVD). But once I enter the shell, my flash drive becomes undetected. There is an error that says usb not accepting, error -101. This error can be seen in the dmesg command. So although setup can run, it fails to install because the master file location is lost, since the USB becomes undetected.

I tried various steps, including disabling the ehci-pci or ehci_hcd module, but it still gave an error.

The solution I used was to place the master ISO file onto the hard disk, for example to /dev/sda1.

After that, prepare a flash drive that already contains Slackware.

Boot from the flash drive.

After entering the flash drive’s shell, create an installation folder.

• mkdir /slack

After that, copy the ISO file that is on sda1 to the installation folder.

• mkdir /mnt/sda1

• mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1

• cd /mnt/sda1

• cp <nama>.iso /slack

Go back into the slack installation folder, and create a folder for mounting.

• cd /slack

• mkdir mnt

• mount -o loop <nama>.iso /slack/mnt

Done? No errors? If so, you can continue.

Enter slackware setup and then you configure all the partitions. In the target selection menu, choose CD/DVD. Then you choose manual for all, and enter the path /slack/mnt.

The installation should work now. It’s still unclear whether the issue was my BIOS or my hardware. But at least now everything can be installed.