Having a hard time Installing Ubuntu...

Question

I've been using Windows XP for a while now, and overall am pretty satisfied with it. However, I realized I really don't play any games, and I've wanted to try Linux for a long time. With the recent versions people are raving about I figured now would be as good a time as any to give it a shot.

Right now I have a Dimension 4700. My onboard CDROM drive took a dive on me a while ago, and I replaced it with an external USB DVD burner by LG. I downloaded the latest updates for both the computers BIOS and the burners firmware.

I downloaded the Ubuntu 7.04 ISO and burned it using poweriso. I restarted the computer to change the BIOS settings to boot from the CD. I was greeted with several options to boot from:

Onboard or USB Floppy Drive
Onboard SATA HD
Onboard or USB CDROM Drive

Sweet I thought, even though my onboard drive is fried, it should pick up my USB drive and launch from that... No dice!

After I place the 3rd option to the top, I get this message: "No Boot Device Available." Whats going on? Is it even possible to boot from a USB device?

I'm sure it's just a simple problem that I've stupidly overlooked. Any and all help will be greatly appreciated, I really want to try this out. (Beryl looks like so much fun)

Thanks!

pcgeek11 · Answer

Try pressing F12 at boot time and selecting the USB device from there. Yes you can boot from a USB, I do it all the time.   pcgeek11

sarcazmo · Answer

When I push F12 and select 'Boot from onboard or USB CDROM drive' I get the same message 'No Boot Device Available.'

Lnx805 · Answer

Does the light for the drive turn on? There's a chance that the boot track for the CD is not setup correctly which would give the error you describe.
By chance do you have another bootable cd to confirm it's not a hardware issue? Or another system to verify the boot-ability of the CD..?

Message Edited by Lnx805 on 05-05-2007 03:12 PM

sarcazmo · Answer

I went out and purchased a new internal CDROM drive today, worked like a charm.   Now I have to figure out a way to dual boot Ubuntu...  I may buy another hard drive and do it that way.

bob350 · Answer

Howdy Heres a link to a good dual boot / grub page

http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/p15.htm

I use 2 hard drives to dual boot my 8400 with XP & Ubuntu - Feisty & works great for me. I have edited Grub to have XP boot first, unless I hit F1 so I can boot into Feisty

Bob

edited in I.E. to make the link work, one of the things that I dislike about the forums & firefox

Message Edited by bob350 on 05-06-2007 08:53 AM

rigo49 · Answer

I have several dual boot systems at home:
For example in the DELL I have installed Windows XP & Fedora, in the other HP I have Windows Server 2003 along with Windows XP and the new Ubuntu bistro installed.
In all cases I have used Norton Partition Magic 8.0 to create the dual or triple partition.

When I installed Ubuntu I let Ubuntu do the automatic installation and be in charge of the main menu. Ubuntu became the default OS so now If I want to access either windows XP or Windows Server all I have to do is choose the Windows Loader from the main Ubuntu menu.

"Easy like Sunday Morning"

sarcazmo · Answer

Thanks for the great info.  I have 3 partitions now, 2 from dell, and the main with windows on it.  Doesn't dual booting Ubuntu require more than one partition?   At this point I think I'l purchase another HD and dual boot ubuntu off that.

msandersen · Answer

I think you can make do with just one partition for Ubuntu, but it's better to have 3; one for the system, one for your Home (so you can reinstall without destroying your files), and a Swap partition; the latter is like a Page file, generally 1 - 1.5 times the amount of RAM. I use around 1.2 times on mine. 5-6Gb ought to be plenty for the Root partition, unless you run a server with a large Var directory, in which case you could set up a separate partition for that, too.

rigo49 · Answer

Andersen is correct, you may not need an extra partition for Ubuntu to operate; but it is better in the long run for system upgrades and such. The reason I did not do it is because I'm running a total of 3 different operating systems in the same machine.

jm1710 · Answer

This is an interesting problem. You might want to troll around other linux forums looking for people with a similar circumstance. I would offer the following advice: 1. If your onboard CD is dead, remove it from your system. If it isn't working then removing it from your system isn't going to really harm anything. If it is sort of working, but not enough to be usable, my thought is that it can only add to the confusion. 2. While Ubuntu certainly supports USB, the kernel may not load USB support until after it starts booting. If it doesn't have USB support immediately, then it can't see the CD ROM drive. The following post talks about a situation similar to yours, but maybe not quite the same, it may be a good starting point for you. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=80811 Please reply if you need more help. I am by no means an expert, but I have gotten enough systems working in various distros to be dangerous. John

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Having a hard time Installing Ubuntu...

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