ubuntu wont boot

jasonz

jasonz

New Member
I installed the ISO from the website and burned it to a cd. I believe i am suposed to be able to open a browser from the CD and select a live boot when i boot, but i cant do neither. Autoplay from the CD brings up a little ubuntu graphic and says "loading browser" then it disappears and nothing happens. When I boot from the CD, it opens some options. There is nothing that says anything about "live" but the first option is "start or install unbuntu". when i select this, it hangs. It is reading off the CD, but it does nothing for over 30 min, so i manually cut it off and restart.

Something i noticed is the ISO on the disc is like less than 10 MB, but the file is suposed to be almost 700 MB.

If anyone can help, id appreciate it. Got kinda stoked about it after doing all the research, looks really cool.

Used some info from here- http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2369893842637434537
 
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You had a bad burn most likely along with not having previously created the root and swap partitions. Believe when I say I had trying to get ubuntu on here. Fedora Core 4, Zenwalk 3.0, and Mandriva went on much easier.

Are you dual booting with need for a selector to autoload the choice of OS or planning on booting with a Grub or Lilo floppy to load the disto once running?
 
I think with Grub. The video shows that the ubuntu install should partion how much you select and you can then choose at startup which OS you want, without booting from some other media.

Zenwalk looks really good too, however i dont fully understand the partioning directions on the website. I dont want to reinstall windows and create portions, and i dont want to accidentally erase windows. I want it to work like the video showed, where i choose the size to partion, and it automatically sets up the dual boot. If something goes wrong, is it possible to reinstall windows from the recovery CD.

Thanks, Jason.
 
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The problem you have there is having Windows already installed before planning out the drive for multiple OSs. If you don't currently have space left on the drive of at least 1-2gb for a swap partition and a good 1-1.5gb available for the root where the Linux files are installed to you would have to delete the current partition and lose everything there.

If you have a 100gb drive that ends up seeing some 86gb after partitioning and formatting are completed and split that in half you then have 46gb for Windows, 2gb for the swap partition, and the remaining for the root. For having the automatic choice of either Windows or Linux when first starting up there are some universal loaders you can use other then Grub or Lilo. Those install into the Windows master boot record(mbr) in order to work.

According to some lately there are a few distros that will load while Windows is running without any changes needed to the current. You run one of them on a virtual not actual hard drive. The files are copied into folders on the current partition. As far as the recovery disk that will depend on how complete the installer is. The first XP disk here was a recovery disk that could still partition the drive as well as perform a full install of Windows.
 
Ok I finally got ubuntu installed. I have a windows partion, a linux partion, a swap partion, and some partion i am unsure of that was already there. At startup, ubuntu works fine when i select it, but windows will not. When i select windows, the black startup XP screen comes up for a few seconds then it restarts again. I can only boot into ubuntu. Please help me resolve this problem if anyone can.

And thanks PC eye for the help.
 
I had that exact problem....i partioned a 20Gb section of my hard drive and dual booted xp with Ubuntu and when setup finished i restarted.

Linux would boot up fine but Xp was dead:D

Didnt matter though because my xp needed re-instaling anyway.
 
Nevakonaza said:
I had that exact problem....i partioned a 20Gb section of my hard drive and dual booted xp with Ubuntu and when setup finished i restarted.

Linux would boot up fine but Xp was dead:D

Didnt matter though because my xp needed re-instaling anyway.
Click to expand...

what did you do? Can i reinstall windows on the partion it was on. I dont have a windows CD just the recovery CD that i can boot off of but it just puts window how it was when i got my laptop. I found a way to access most of my files off the windows partion so its not really bad for now, but I really want it to work.
 
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I just formatted the whole drive a week later using my xp disk....as i tried out linux for one week but just couldnt stay with it.
so therefore i didnt need the linux partion anymore.

I just have xp installed now.

hmm you should try doing a destructive system restore with your recovery disk.
But i dont think that will work...just give it a try though.
 
If you do a recovery with your system discs, it will erase grub, and you will have to reinstall Ubuntu afterwards. But after that, your dual-boot should work fine.
 
The problem there was an immediate change to mbr when installing ubuntu. Instead of having Grub overwrite the original mbr you should gone with a universal boot loader good for Windows as well as Linux. BootPart is one of them found at http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm

Another free universal loader requires some language skills. http://desktopengineer.com/story_20010108151846474

Your installation of ubuntu won't be removed simply by restoring the Windows installation with the recovery disk or better even a repair install where the basics in Windows are reinstalled without effecting thing else but the actual mbr. http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Once Windows is up and running the options to load ubuntu by booting from a Grub or Lilio boot disk(floppy cd) would be one way to load Linux separately. The universal type boot manager is a cross platform tool to load more then Windows or Linux even. There are guides for multi OSing with either Grub or Lilo properly installed or even using an NTLdr type loader.

Your first problem was not having a full install copy of Windows onhand before trying this out. But the article will outline the simply way to perform a repair install of XP there. One best advice often given is to go with a live for cd version of the version of Linux you are planning to run before making any changes on the drive. But with Windows repaired and running you have the option to install a boot manager. One I tried some time back had Windows and Linux buttons you highlighted on the first screen after the post and pressed the enter key to load the OS selected.
 
I could find no way to repair windows. It was all format or repartion. I also could not find a way to access the windows command line. If i install the bootpart, what happens to grub. Do i need to get rid of it some kind of way, and what do i install it to?

Thanks
 
Ok, did a system recovery on the windows partion and it boots ok. Now i jsut need to get the dual boot to work without messing up windows. Any suggestions?

The problem there was an immediate change to mbr when installing ubuntu. Instead of having Grub overwrite the original mbr you should gone with a universal boot loader good for Windows as well as Linux. BootPart is one of them found at http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm
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when iu extract in in windows it wont open the .exe file.
 
Whoooooooooop!!!! Success.

So after like infinity reboots, 1 reinstall of windows, and 2 installs of Ubuntu, I finally got the damn thing to work. It only took like days, up till 4.30 last night, and some this morning, but it works.

Thanks dudes for helping.
 
grub is an universal boot loader, in fact it stands for GRand Universal Bootloader.

Depending on how you set it up depends on how you need to partition it, and in fact a swap partition is not even needed in some schemes. I just installed kubuntu on my macbook pro, but as a virtual install. Typically the default settings during the installation will work out fine.
 
To set up Grub for multibooting you first have to have a little familiarity with the commands and command line structure. As I mentioned earlier you have to follow the specific instructions found in a Grub tutorial in order to see that set up correctly. One simplified set of instructions is seen at http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Multibooting

The latest ubuntu 6.10 release does have one encouragement. GParted is included in the live desktop version you burn to cd. You can look over the home page at http://www.ubuntu.com/ This one can run without installation live from the cd. But you were able to get both running there with some practice I see.
 
Sorry if I can't help you with wireless there. I still used hard wired connections. The ISP's tech suppport staff indicates they "have fun" when they switched from hard wired dsl to wireless when going to service problems that come up! Your service also has to have Linux drivers available. Otherwise you may be searching for a generic Linux version.
 
jasonz said:
Ok, how do i get my wireless to work in linux
Click to expand...

depending on what wifi chipset is on your laptop depends on how you set it up.

1) go to sourceforge.net and look for any updated firmware or drivers for your wireless card for linux

2) follow the instructions on how to set it up

3) Make sure your wifi is not disabled through the OS or through a key on your laptop

4) Try the ndwis wrapper driver for linux. This allows you to use windows drivers for wireless nics. You may lack some features but it offers basic connectivity.

You can probably find way more info at the ubuntu forums
 
PC eye said:
To set up Grub for multibooting you first have to have a little familiarity with the commands and command line structure. As I mentioned earlier you have to follow the specific instructions found in a Grub tutorial in order to see that set up correctly. One simplified set of instructions is seen at http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Multibooting

The latest ubuntu 6.10 release does have one encouragement. GParted is included in the live desktop version you burn to cd. You can look over the home page at http://www.ubuntu.com/ This one can run without installation live from the cd. But you were able to get both running there with some practice I see.
Click to expand...

You don't have to know the CLI to get GRUB to install or configure. Almost every distro installer cd will do this for you. Then once in the Linux OS you can go into a control panel, yast manager, etc and configure how GRUB works. I do it that way all the time.

If you wanted to build a custom GRUB menu from scratch you would have to know that stuff, so you are right in one sense but very misleading.
 
For a newbie first getting Linux and making the attempts to dual OS right away the review of specific instructions in a tutorial will provide the needed step by step proceedure involved. That really isn't that complicated. But without a working familiarity with bash commands and Grub you simply go line by line in the tutorial there or at another site.

For the advanced Linux user modifying boot loader instructions becomes just about as easy as making changes in XP's boot.ini file. There you already have the working knowledge of the basic commands and structure. For some the bash commands are a little harder to get down then the old dos commands. But even there how many now are familiar with running a dos machine?
 
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