Hello all,
I have an old Gateway computer from 2007 I'd been thinking about converting to Linux for a few months now. It shipped with Vista and lately has been really riding the struggle bus. Hubs bought me a new computer and has been traveling with this one...giving him all sorts of problems. I casually mentioned I'd been pondering Ubuntu as a way to give it new life and he charged ahead all systems go.
Problem is......I don't really know exactly what he did.......and neither does he.
His intention was to create a bootable USB and do the "try it now" option to see if everything ran correctly. He ended up trying to create the USB twice and when he restarted and plugged it in expecting to try it out, here's what happened:
1)Computer is on Ubuntu install screen when I join the party. It says it is "copying files". He maintains he was never asked about trying it vs installing it. This process continues for about 45 minutes including telling us about other things like installing languange packs etc.
2)Computer gets to the end of the process, restarts and presents me with a screen asking me to choose to boot Vista or Ubuntu (USB still in). When I choose Ubuntu, it takes me to a log-in screen that matches the user profiles on my Vista settings. I log in and start clicking around. Firefox started ok and I was able to load pages.
3)I stepped away for a few minutes and when I came back the screen was covered in horizontal lines. I could tell that things were still clickable behind this as sometimes the colors would change slightly, but I couldn't get it to respond to anything I knew how to do (very little) and ended up doing a hard shut-down.
4)Hubs tries to start it this morning without USB. When he chooses Ubuntu it gives him an error and he has to do a hard shut-down. After re-inserting the USB he can choose Ubuntu and picks the recovery mode option. He says that it asked him to do a bunch of updates and then told him that there were problems with the graphics card. I didn't actually see the message so I don't know if there was a code or anything.
I'm sorry this has been so long, but I really don't know where to move forward from here. I don't know if we now have a dual boot computer (but if so, why still need the USB?) or if we can move forward with an ok Vista system like this never happened. Also, how would we go about pinning down the "graphics card issue"? Maybe we need a different driver than the install shipped with?
Here's a little about the computer:
2007 Gateway (I think model mt3705)
Shipped with 1gb RAM (2x512mb) but a friend pulled out one of the 512 cards and put a 2GB in so it now has 2.5GB of ram (but Vista only recognized 2GB)
Pentium duo core - 1.6Ghz
About 95GB free space on the C: drive
Thanks in advance
C
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