Upgrade to 12.04 gives many errors and Windows affected too

[wilee-nilee]

I am doubting this is a software issue if both windows and Ubuntu are being effected on the same computer the only thing they have in common is hardware..

That is a faulty cause and effect, that would not fly in any scientific inquiry analysis.

Not saying it is not possible, but that is a dichotomy, hardly anything in life is right or wrong, or good or bad. There is always a continuum between two exact points.

[murphyac]

I'm having a hard time figuring out how it could be hardware if Xandros 4.5, which is on the same disk as Ubuntu, just a different partition, boots and works perfectly. I can also see my Windows files if I log in to Xandros as root.

Willee-nillee, thanks for the links to Microsoft. It looks like the Windows problems might be memory related, since Windows puts more demands on the memory than Xandros.

I don't know if this still holds true, but at one point Ubuntu had a problem with Intel onboard graphics chips. I seem to remember having to get some extra software some time ago.

I will run the memory test overnight from the CD. 2 passing tests are not a big enough database.

I will also clean the inside of the computer. If all else fails, I will try to use my backups to get the computer back to the pre-upgrade state.
Angela C. Murphy

[murphyac]

Another thing to consider: the Dell Dimension desktop has a series of 4 LED lights on the back. These can either be green or yellow and the positions of the green and yellow lights indicate where a failure has occurred. The lights on the back of my computer are all green, as they have always been. No yellow lights at all.
Just another point in favor of a software failure rather than a hardware failure.
Angela C. Murphy

[murphyac]

Well, I'm chomping on a bit of crow today. As suggested by roelforg (post # 7) I seem to have a memory problem. I ran memtest86+ overnight and woke up to lots of red and about 190,000 errors. Not good. Looks like I'll be cleaning and swapping slots (and I might as well clean the whole inside of the computer while I'm at it) and then running memtest86+ again.

If I still get errors, it's time to buy new memory. It seems that Xandros is working just because it is not as memory-intensive as Ubuntu 12.04 and WindowsXP. Joy.
Oh well, it's better than nothing. If new memory solves the issue, I'll come back and mark this thread as solved.

Thanks to all for your suggestions.
Angela C. Murphy

[murphyac]

Did a few more tests, switched positions of DIMMs, still lots of errors. Then I put the DIMMs in separately. I had one good DIMM and one bad DIMM. Since my desktop needs matched pairs, I went out and bought 4, 1GB DIMMS in 2-packs. Installed them and ran memtest86+ again, and kept running it for 5 passes with no errors. I'm now doing better, but I still have system errors and update manager, synaptic and software center are not working. There are also still some problems in Windows, and I'll run chkdsk there.

I will start another thread to ask about trying to re-install 12.04 from the CD, but for now this thread is solved.

Thanks to all who tried to help me.
Angela C. Murphy