Howto: Install Ubuntu without a CD

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Originally Posted by N700

Thanks! Is that reliable, the installation of GRUB to boot Windows? From my experience with it, Windows tends to get a bit precious about anything else modifiying bits of it, and then it'll refuse to work, leading to spending 20+ hours doing a reinstall which I'd like to avoid.

It's Windows XP Pro if that makes any difference.

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Well, of course there's no cast-iron guarantee, and you should definitely back up all important data before doing something major to your system like this, just in case. That said, I've done this a couple of times with no problems, and haven't heard of many cases where the Grub installation messed up. The Ubuntu installer seems to do a pretty good job. Just take it slowly and carefully.

Here's a good guide:
http://members.iinet.net/~herman546/index.html
Starting from Unetbootin you'll be doing something close to the "alternate" install referred to a bit down the page. (There's lots of good advice on that site.)

I used UNetbootin to download Ubuntu 9.04 onto my Dell INSPIRON | 1501 laptop that previously ran Windows XP. The screen on the laptop is broken, so I have it connected to a monitor. The things I read said that it would bring up a screen to select the OS, so I pressed down and than enter. After a minute or so My monitor displayed the desktop. I double clicked install and went easily through the first three steps and the screen shown in the screenshot came up. I have about 50 GB free, but I want to delete windows and run only on Linux. This is my first time changing OS or dealing with partitions at all, so it would be best if you dumbed it down a bit.

Best option would be to install ubuntu from windows is to follow this
http://wubi-installer.org/

i have done it and it was fairly straight forward...

Yo Ubuntu!!!

I'm not having any luck using Unetbootin to do a Hard Disk Install.

My current OS is Ubuntu 9.10, but I'd like to try a different one.

From what I can tell, the problem might be with GRUB2. At reboot, I'm not getting the option to launch Unetbootin. Instead, 9.10 just starts loading.

It seems this issue has already been addressed:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...in/+bug/386862

However, Unetbootin doesn't seem to be working with 9.10.

Have you tried the latest version from Unetbootin's site?
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

yes... I used 3.77

Tried unetbootin to install ... well anything that will work but no such luck.
Fedora-11-i686-Live hangs at first message
Fedora-12-i686-Live no root device found
ubuntu-8.04.3-alternate-i386.iso Asking for a DVD during setup
ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso Doesn't show anything because of my graphics card

Running windows xp and have some unused space on my harddisk I would like ubuntu or fedora installed, did it once on another computer but forgot how.

Don't have a DVD or USB drive I can use to boot and run setup so let unetbootin put all the files on C:, this is NTFS and that might be the problem.
Fedora doesn't boot at all and Ubuntu is asking to mount a cd rom but the setup is not on the cd rom.

Ok, remembered to replace some stuff after unetbootin was done and gone to here:
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dis...ages/hd-media/

Then downloaded the files:
boot.img.gz
initrd.gz
vmlinuz

Then run unetbootin with the ubuntu-8.04.3-alternate-i386.iso and have it put all the files on C:.
When that was done I copied initrd.gz and vmlinuz to C:\install (overwrite) and rebooted.
This worked fine, got the setup running, the setup might be looking for iso's to mount so put ubuntu-8.04.3-alternate-i386.iso in c:\

hello. thanks for the program, it work great. i've successfully erased my windows xp and install ubuntu 8.10. however there's a er end up in the ubuntu desktop and instead just got stuck in some DOS like OS. when i check it seems i am running "ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-16-generic" . it asks me to log in and when i did it just stand there with a "reagen@reagen:~$ " . waiting for command i dunno of. since everything is running fine, i assume it's not the installer 's problem, and i probably did something wrong during installation. i'm no computer expert ,so here 's me asking you guys : what is wrong and how do i fix it? any help would be appreciated. thanks anyway....

It sounds as if you've installed just the basic command-line-only system. Maybe you forgot to select one of the desktop setups during the installation process. Two options I'd say:
1)go back and do it over again, this time choosing "ubuntu desktop" or whatever when that menu comes up (arrows to go up and down, spacebar to select),or
2)carry on and install the ubuntu desktop (if that's what you want) by typing

Code:

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sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

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at that command prompt you get. You'll be asked for your password, then a whole lot more stuff will install.