Ubuntu Recovery from a Bad Update

The other night my brother came home from work and gave me his laptop told me he kinda busted his Ubuntu. I ask him what happened and he told me he was updating his system via update manager when all of sudden his laptop died. When he rebooted he was able to login but once inside lots of stuff were missing like USB ports are not detected, Sound was missing. One of the most important applet was also missing, the network manager was gone! To make the long story short i was able to fix the problem using Ubuntu's recovery mode

Once inside recovery mode i selected Repair Broken Packages and after a couple of minutes voila everything is back to normal.

I told my brother to make sure your laptop is plugged in when updating your system and never never never with a battery even if its fully charge.

Brandless Notebook from China

I got this notebook as a present of sort from a friend who bought a bunch of these Chinese notebook for his business. He gave me one and told me if i fix it its mine. So after the Christmas rush, after sending out the last orders from my online store i went about fixing this thing. The problem was very simple the power cord/charger needs replacing. Since this is a brandless notebook i couldn't find the supplier here to replace the charger. So the next best thing to do is get a charger from a different brand with the same specs. I was able to find a HP charger with the same specs and now i am able to charge and turn on the notebook... yey! At first the OS didn't load but a couple more tinkering with the BIOS i was able to load the Chinese version of windows XP. And since i don't know Chinese i nuke the OS and installed Ubuntu 10.10. Now i have a new notebook. The only thing to gripe about is the measly 2 cell battery that i can't replace. But hey its a free notebook who am i to complain. :)

Specs i gathered using Hardinfo in Ubuntu.

Intel Atom N280
Intel Graphic 945GM/943/940GML Express Chipset
Intel HDA Audio
1gig DDR2 Ram
Samsung 160gig HD
12.1 Screen with 1366x768 resolution
Realtek Wireless RTL8187SE
1.3 Megapixel Builtin Webcam
2 cell LION Battery