Boot problems, attempting to upgrade

[hermintrude]

I have been running an old version of Ubuntu on a couple of PCs, each double-booted with XP. I have now downloaded 12.10 LTS, burned it to a CD, and tried to upgrade the two PCs. In both cases it reported that it had 'uninstalled' the old Ubuntu, but it seems to have left the HAD.DLL 'missing or corrupt', so that the boot process now ignores the CD, and only offers a choice between XP (which still boots OK) and 'Windows default' (which seems to be a replacement for the old Ubuntu option) but it fails, reporting the HAD.DLL problem.

The CD looks to have been burned OK, from the download, and it starts to run OK, but when I take the 3rd option, (Help me to boot from CD) and after it reports the uninstall, it then offers to make a 'new boot menu entry'. When I take this 'Install' option, the Ubuntu CD Boot Helper then reports an error, referring to some log-entry, which I cannot find.

The CD precedes the hard-drive in the boot-sequence on both PCs, but the HAD.DLL problem seems to trump that. It looks as if I need to clean up the debris of the (incomplete?) uninstall, by sorting out the HAD.DLL, before it will allow the CD to boot-up the new 12.10 LTS, presumably onto a PC which by then would look as if it had never had Unbuntu installed before?

So questions....
.... if that right, how do I do it?
.... if not, then what to do next?

Any advice, please.

[Impavidus]

The old dual booted ubuntu, was that a normal install or a wubi install? And have you properly burned the .iso to the cd as an image, not as a file?

There isn't really such a thing as uninstalling Ubuntu, except for uninstalling wubi. Uninstalling Ubuntu means nothing more than deleting the Ubuntu partition and installing a new (windows) boot loader, and to install a new ubuntu you can just overwrite the old one without first uninstalling it. So I'm puzzled where the uninstall step comes from.

HAD.DLL is a windows file (as are all .dll files) and is not used when booting Ubuntu. When booting Ubuntu from the Live cd no file from your hard disk is read, so it appears to me that the HAD.DLL problem only occurs after your computer has already given up on booting from the Live cd. Whatever operating systems, properly or improperly installed or uninstalled, are on your hard disk doesn't matter for your Live cd. And when you can boot from your Live cd you can install Ubuntu, whatever is on your disk (but be careful not to delete your win XP, unless you want to get rid of that anyway).

[grahammechanical]

It is my guess that you are using what was called Ubuntu Secure Remix and is now called Linix Secure Remix. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Li...ntuSecureRemix and you are using OS-Uninstaller, which did what you told it to do. It uninstalled that old version of Ubuntu. But the question is: Have you installed Ubuntu 12.10? Oh, by the way, 12.10 is not an LTS. It is Ubuntu 12.04 that is the present LTS version. So, there is some confusion.

[bcbc]

I have been running an old version of Ubuntu on a couple of PCs, each double-booted with XP. I have now downloaded 12.10 LTS, burned it to a CD, and tried to upgrade the two PCs. In both cases it reported that it had 'uninstalled' the old Ubuntu, but it seems to have left the HAD.DLL 'missing or corrupt', so that the boot process now ignores the CD, and only offers a choice between XP (which still boots OK) and 'Windows default' (which seems to be a replacement for the old Ubuntu option) but it fails, reporting the HAD.DLL problem.

The CD looks to have been burned OK, from the download, and it starts to run OK, but when I take the 3rd option, (Help me to boot from CD) and after it reports the uninstall, it then offers to make a 'new boot menu entry'. When I take this 'Install' option, the Ubuntu CD Boot Helper then reports an error, referring to some log-entry, which I cannot find.

The CD precedes the hard-drive in the boot-sequence on both PCs, but the HAD.DLL problem seems to trump that. It looks as if I need to clean up the debris of the (incomplete?) uninstall, by sorting out the HAD.DLL, before it will allow the CD to boot-up the new 12.10 LTS, presumably onto a PC which by then would look as if it had never had Unbuntu installed before?

So questions....
.... if that right, how do I do it?
.... if not, then what to do next?

Any advice, please.

When you have a Wubi install, rerunning Wubi will first remove the old install (everything, data, setup etc.). This is what happened. The third option, help me boot from CD, just does what it says, helps you boot from the CD for people that cannot get the BIOS to boot the CD. This is usually unnecessary - pressing F12 or whatever BIOS override key you have will let you boot from the CD.
Installing in this way (by booting the CD), creates a normal dual boot, not a Wubi install which it appears you had previously (gone if you ran Wubi in Windows).

So, if you want to install a normal dual boot, just boot from the CD and install. If you want to upgrade, then you cannot do it from the CD. You have to do it from the booted Ubuntu install. (This may be too late for you).
If you had backups of the \ubuntu directory from Windows, you may be able to recover the old installs.


Also those HAL.DLL errors, usually just mean the boot entry is bad. Not sure what is going on, but post the contents of C:\boot.ini and I can see what's up.

[hermintrude]

Thanks for the feedback - several points....

1 ... yes, my mistake on the version number - it was (of course) the non-LTS which was 12.10, what I downloaded was 12.04 LTS.

2 ... I suspect (recall? - it was some time ago) that what I had (on both XP PCs) was a Wubi installation. I think it was visible in the Control Panel list of apps, but it also did offer Ubuntu v XP at boot time (which confused me).

3 ... Based on your advice, I'm now suspecting that I may have two different problems .... not copying/burning the boot-disk correctly, plus a bit of detritus in my boot info.

When making the CD, it offered me two different ways of copying, and I've now tried both. They both now seem to start the boot process OK (with the purple display, and four dots progressively changing colour) but after a couple of minutes they both start reporting various errors. In each case I used a blank CD-R, and their contents 'look' OK. I recently tried a different method, but it demanded a CD-RW, which I did not have to-hand.

Unfortunately, my two XP PCs are both so old that they won't boot from a USB - so I guess that I need to get the CD copy working properly. I do have another (Vista) PC, and I was thinking of also trying to make that double-booted (Vista and Ubuntu-12.04-LTS). If I can solve the CD-writing problem (for the older XP PCs), then presumably it would also work for the Vista PC, but (to get started) would it be easier to go for a USB installation on the Vista PC..?

bcbc .... I could only find a boot.ini.backup, but it was recently updated, so I suspect its contents may reflect the real thing - they are as follows....

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=C:\wubildr.mbr
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn



The 3rd line looks like the detritus (??), but how to get rid of it?

Thanks again for all the help.

[bcbc]

Change the boot.ini to: (notice that the "default=xxx" matches the last line up to the first "=", so you can copy it rather than try to type it)

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

NOTE: backup the one you have before making changes. If you make a mistake it could prevent Windows from booting. See How to edit the Boot.ini for more info.

In order to create an Ubuntu CD, you need to download the ISO and then check the md5sum. If you don't check it, then you could waste a CD by burning a corrupted ISO. If you used a torrent to download it, it's probably okay, but a web browser download can be unreliable so you need to check.

You can also check your existing CDs by booting from them, pressing a key when you first see the keyboard and person icon (bottom centre), then select your language, and from the extended menu select "Check disk for errors". Because it's also possible that the CD is okay but maybe there are some hardware issues with an older PC.

Also, the 12.10 ISO is too big for a CD, you'd need a DVD. If you have the 10.04.2 ISO it looks like it should fit at 693MB. So likely you did download the 12.04.2 but check anyway.

Finally, your confusing about Wubi is understandable... it installs inside Windows (hence the control panel, add/remove programs entry), but it dual boots 'natively'. So it does appear to be a normal dual boot. Under the covers there is a virtual disk/partition, so it's not the same as a normal dual boot.
And at any time you can completely remove it by uninstalling from the Windows control panel (which it appears you have done).

[hermintrude]

Bcbc …. Thanks for the advice. As it happens I had already worked out how to burn a proper disk-image, and also that the size forced me to go to a DVD. So I had not confirmed any checksum, but now the DVD does seem to boot OK, and it offers me the run (try out) or install options, and I have tried the install, several times. On the first time I selected to install side-by-side with XP, and it then went through the partitioning process.

In due course the Ubuntu desktop came up, but it reported a ‘system problem detected’ but carried on. Then it reported that ‘Sorry Ubuntu 12.04 has experienced an internal error – if you note further problems, try restarting’. Voluminous details followed, but it included the following….
· executable path …. /usr/bin/Xorg
· title …. Xorg crashed with SIGABORT in miPointerUpdateSprite()
· ‘unreportable reason’ …. ‘you have some obsolete package versions installed – please upgrade the following packages and check if the problem still occurs …. libciaccess0, xserver-common’.

I am puzzled by the concept of having obsolete packages ‘installed’, when I assumed that all the s/w was coming from the DVD..?? The desktop still seemed to ‘work’, but very slowly, and the CD-drive was in overdrive, so it did not seem to be working from the hard-drive. When I went to shut-down, it only offered ‘suspend’, and I had to power-down to restart.

Rebooting then did not offer an Ubuntu option, but when I repeated the whole installation process (several times) it always offered to re-install Ubuntu 12.04.LTS, which it seemed to recognise as already installed. Each installation attempt then consistently fails on the same ‘obsolete packages’ problem.

I guess that I could go back to the checksum point, but the problem (at least as reported) seems to be more contextual.

Any further advice would be much appreciated.

[bcbc]

What is the full hardware specs of the machine? (include brand, model, graphics card, wifi card etc.). The problem could be a hardware incompatibility coupled with a 'grasping at straws' message text.

If you can boot from the DVD, then do it, as soon as you see the keyboard/person icon (bottom centre) press any key, then select your language and it should load an extended menu - one of the options is to check the disk for errors... try this and it should verify it correctly and rule out any chance that the packages are invalid.

[hermintrude]

bcbc .... thanks for the tip on checking the disk, and it passed OK - so it's now it looks more like an install problem than a 'boot problem'.

The PC is a Dell DIMENSION 8250, Intel(R), Pentium(R)...
.... running Windows XP Home Edition Version 2002, Service Pack 3, but I suppose that is not relevant here.

It is unchanged since it came direct from Dell many years ago.

I am not aware of any wifi facility or card, and I cannot find any reference to the/a graphics card....
.... but the web suggests that the 8250 (normally) came with a AGP Geforce 4 mx420 … ??

BTW, the message sequence, during the LTS install process is consistent....
.... a one-liner, towards the end of the initial (4 dots) phase, saying: I/O space for GPIO uninitialised
.... a message-window, after the Ubuntu desktop shows, saying: system error detected .... but providing a 'continue' button
.... the later message-window, saying: sorry Ubuntu 12.04 has experienced an internal error, etc, including reference to the two 'packages'

....after which no further DVD disk activity

The desktop continued 'working', but painfully slowly, and the installation appears to be incomplete, because it then is not available on re-boot.

Does that help at all ..??

[bcbc]

You should make sure you're booting with nomodeset - see if that helps since the failure looks related to graphics (the one mentioning obsolete packages). But you might also want to consider running a lighter distro like Lubuntu or Xubuntu on that hardware since Ubuntu 12.04 is (near as I can tell) not really designed to work on older hardware.

I've got an old desktop at home and it's still running 10.04 because I'm sure that it's not going to work with 12.04. But try first with nomodeset - run the updates - see how far it gets you.