Ubuntu Installation Woes

[1mck]

Hi, I didn't get a response from anyone at Ubuntu on my installation issue, so I thought I'd try here...any thoughts?

1mck
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Hello,

I have tried to install Ubuntu onto a spare hard drive that I have, and it simply will not boot up, and I keep getting "99" all over the screen, and that's it. I should point out that I also tried installing Linspire, and that one wouldn't boot up as well, and it locked me out of booting up Win XP.

My system is:

Pentium 4 3Ghz
Asus P4C800 Deluxe Mother board
1 gig of Corsair Ram
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Video Card
ATI TV Wonder Pro with remote control Capture card
Creative Labs Audigy 2 sound card.
LG 52X CD/RW
LG Super Multi 16x DVD Burner
2 10,000 RPM Serial ATA Raptor drives 37gigs each
1 160gig ide hard drive
oh...and a nice blue light in it.

I have had a lot of success with Xandros, and it installs with no problem at all, so I'm wondering what is happening to Ubuntu. Everyone that I've talked to about Ubuntu, who know about it, have nothing, but nice things to say about the distro, so I'm kind of anxious to install it because it's supposed to be so user friendly.

At any rate, I hope that my issue can be resolved, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thanks,
1mck

[Aloone_Jonez]

Firstly Linspire sucks adn I hope you didn't pay for it.

Secondly, have you checked your Ubuntu CD for errors? How did you get it, did you download it?

Finally if Xandros works for you why do you want Ubuntu?

[WMD]

I had a friend with a similar problem.  It turned out that his computer had Windows (installed first) on his secondary hard drive, and his BIOS pointed to booting that drive.  Linux didn't like it this way, and it took a lot of work to get them working properly.  Later it just broke and left the dual-boot inoperable.

[1mck]

The reason that I want to go to Ubuntu is because it has everything, and with Xandros you are prevented from burning over 2x for anything.

I did purchase Linspire, and when it didn't work, they gave me a refund without any questions, so it was a good experience dealing with them, although not trying to install it.

I guess I'm stuck here with not being able to install Ubuntu, or anything else other than Xandros.

Is Mandrake limited for anything, and would you suggest it over Xandros? I think the problem may lie with the distro using "Grub" instead of "Lilo" I could be way off here, but that seems to be the only thing that I can come up with. Perhaps Grub is not compatible with Windoze being installed first as compared to Lilo being okay with it.

Anyway, thanks again to all that have answered my query.

1mck

[Orethrius]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't he potentially alter his Grub bootloader settings from Knoppix?  If so, there's a great site where he could get an ISO to burn.  :cool:

[WMD]

I don't see how LILO vs. Grub could be causing it; however, anything is possible.  If you want to experiment with that, Mandrake includes both and isn't limited the way Xandros is.  I'd recommend 10.1 over "Limited Edition 2005" because the latter will be discontinued rather quickly.

SuSE I've also recently tried; it's good.  Version 9.2 can be installed over FTP, which I did, and it works fine.  (Granted that was only a single-boot.)

[1mck]

Well, I tried installing Mandrake, and it seems that Xandros is insisting that it is still there because the Xandros boot screen is still there, and that's where I make my choices as to log into Xandros, or Windoze, and Mandrake doesn't even register that it is there at all. Xandros will let me boot into Windoze, but not Xandros. I then thought I'd try Ubuntu again, and still it's a no fucking go. Now I have to find my Xandros disk again to see if I can fix it. Fuck!

Any thoughts?

I did try to boot into Expert Mode, and I received this error with a whole lot of other stuff way before it, but this is the last thing that was there:
Kernal Panic-not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,18)

Whatever the fuck that means.

1mck

[edisav]

Well, it seems that you're in deep shit! It may save you sometime booting in winblows, backing up all important data, formatting the whole drive, and starting from zero.

You can then reinstall winblows and then Mandrake, which automatically take care of the double booting. Or you just can ignore winblows altogether.

Just an idea.

[WMD]

1.  Use Knoppix (or other bootable Linux...I think Mandrake's CD has a console mode) and run: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 Replace the hda with whatever drive you're working with.

2.  Run the XP Recovery mode, so Windows can boot.

3.  Run your Linux installer of choice.

[1mck]

Ooookay, so like can you describe what it is that I'm doing here? I wrote it all down, but what will this do? Will it delete the Xandros installer screen, and replace it with Mandrake? What do you mean run in "Console" is that just like in dos for Windoze? Man, I'm tryin' to learn here!lol This is really tough stuff to me!

Thanks for the support Linux Gods:-)

1mck

[KernelPanic]

1.  Use Knoppix (or other bootable Linux...I think Mandrake's CD has a console mode) and run: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 Replace the hda with whatever drive you're working with.

2.  Run the XP Recovery mode, so Windows can boot.

3.  Run your Linux installer of choice.

Re. 1.

Wrong. He only needs to wipe the first 448 bytes, if he does the full 512 then it also kills the partition table. Bad news indeed.

[WMD]

Ooookay, so like can you describe what it is that I'm doing here? I wrote it all down, but what will this do? Will it delete the Xandros installer screen, and replace it with Mandrake? What do you mean run in "Console" is that just like in dos for Windoze? Man, I'm tryin' to learn here!lol This is really tough stuff to me!

Thanks for the support Linux Gods:-)

1mck

Okay.  Go back and cross out the "512" you wrote down and put in "448" as KernelPanic says.  What this does (yes, console is the DOS-like stuff), is remove the bootloader (ie, the Xandros screen, and the stuff that makes the OSs boot).  That makes it so nothing can boot.  Then, you have to do XP Recovery (from the CD) to make XP boot.  Then, install Mandrake, and it'll make both bootable.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Just start Windows XP recovery console and use the fixbmr command. I don't know why I didn't say this before as I had the same problem when I switched from RedHat to Vector Linux.

[Orethrius]

Just start Windows XP recovery console and use the fixbmr command. I don't know why I didn't say this before as I had the same problem when I switched from RedHat to Vector Linux.

I just pictured him trying to fix the MBR with that command.
fixmbr for future reference.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Thanks for pointing out my typo.