Solved! Big problem with small laptop

Mar 3, 2020
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I have a problem with a small laptop owned by one of my grandchildren. He has totally filled the memory and it will not complete the startup process.

It is a 12" laptop made by Acer, model POYCY - the screen detaches from the keyboard if required, to make a windows tablet. It apparently has a 4-core intel processor inside. That's all the info I have on it.

When I try to log in by pressing function keys to interrupt at boot time, it will only let me in as some sort of ghost user, which seems to allow me to browse and even delete stuff, but none of the changes or any other actions are actually put into effect, even though it looks as if it is has been.

I plugged in a micro sd card, so that it might use the extra ram as memory when I was trying some of the boot options, but it doesn't seem to make any difference.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to the way forward?

I would prefer not to have to unsolder chips, I would much rather try software solutions, if it is possible.

Any ideas would be much appreciated..
 
Solution
In the past, I have used Puppy Linux boot DVD and used its file manager to delete folders and files I wanted deleted. However, afterward, if you can reboot into Safe Mode, then you can uninstall un-needed programs and utilities.
Mar 3, 2020
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uninstall unused app
Thanks for trying and I appreciate your reply, but as I said in my post no action takes effect. If you try to delete anything, it looks as if it is deleted, but it isn't. No command or action does anything. The only login that is available has no permissions at all and can do nothing, even though it looks as if it doing what you want, it does nothing. Delete a file and it disappears, but it is still there when you log in again. It is very frustrating!
 

RolandJS

Estimable
Mar 10, 2017
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In the past, I have used Puppy Linux boot DVD and used its file manager to delete folders and files I wanted deleted. However, afterward, if you can reboot into Safe Mode, then you can uninstall un-needed programs and utilities.
 
Solution
Mar 3, 2020
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I did look for that, but there isn't a list of options to choose from, just the one - when the boot sequence is stopped, it only offers a continue as guest option, which is the access that doesn't allow you to do anything, with the alternative of closing down the laptop.

Frankly, I've never come across anything like this kind of fault. Once you've broken the boot sequence, there are usually options. I did accidentally stop it once by just hitting the function keys at random and I got to the C:\ prompt, got excited about deleting files, but again when I tried it, I was refused, with a message something about me not having permissions to do that. I've since tried several times to get the same access, but I must have hit a couple of keys at once, because I have not yet got back into it using them one at a time to try to upset the start and get in - it only happened the once. I've tried with and with/without Fn or Ctrl key and various function keys, but it makes no difference.

I was going to chuck it because it has already wasted too much of my time, it was only by accident that I found this forum. It looks as if that's what I'll end up doing.

Thank you both for trying. I'll hang around for a week just in case anyone comes up with something that works, but if not, it's going on freecycle or in the bin.