6.10 works, why won't 8.10

[dwieberd]

Yesterday I successfully installed from an old 6.10 I had lying around to my HP laptop. I was impressed. Then I thought I would be able to easily upgrade from there one step at a time to the latest and greatest. Found that that didn't work as the old repositories aren't kept around. Ok, so I download the latest 8.10, burn the CD and try it: Guess what? It does absoultely nothing. Drive sounds like it's spinning up but the boot display never changes after hitting <enter>. Frustrating. Doesn't seem like progress. Is there anything I can do besides trying random combinations of boot parameters? I'm ready to experience that legendary Ubuntu support for the first time! Thanks.

[taurus]

What's the spec of your laptop?

How fast did you burn the CD?

Did you pick the option to scan the cd for defects at the initial screen?

[skern03]

There are a lot of issues with 8.10, both from an upgrade and from an install CD. Try 8.04 - it's more stable. Here a couple of other things I had to do to get 8.04 and 8.10 install started (altho 8.10 never did work for me):

1) clean the CD or DVD drive you're using. The compression used on these CDs is intense; all it takes is a little dust on the read/write head to stop it from functioning.

2) if you can get the install screen (after you select your language) to appear, position the highlight on the Install entry, but DO NOT hit enter. Instead, hit the F6 key. You should see a line of parameters. Type: "noapci" (without the quotes) and then hit enter. I've had to use that parameter on several different versions and several different machines.


Yesterday I successfully installed from an old 6.10 I had lying around to my HP laptop. I was impressed. Then I thought I would be able to easily upgrade from there one step at a time to the latest and greatest. Found that that didn't work as the old repositories aren't kept around. Ok, so I download the latest 8.10, burn the CD and try it: Guess what? It does absolutely nothing. Drive sounds like it's spinning up but the boot display never changes after hitting <enter>. Frustrating. Doesn't seem like progress. Is there anything I can do besides trying random combinations of boot parameters? I'm ready to experience that legendary Ubuntu support for the first time! Thanks.

[oilchangeguy]

Yesterday I successfully installed from an old 6.10 I had lying around to my HP laptop. I was impressed. Then I thought I would be able to easily upgrade from there one step at a time to the latest and greatest. Found that that didn't work as the old repositories aren't kept around. Ok, so I download the latest 8.10, burn the CD and try it: Guess what? It does absoultely nothing. Drive sounds like it's spinning up but the boot display never changes after hitting <enter>. Frustrating. Doesn't seem like progress. Is there anything I can do besides trying random combinations of boot parameters? I'm ready to experience that legendary Ubuntu support for the first time! Thanks.

computer specs please. cpu speed, amount of ram, and hard drive size.

[dwieberd]

It's an hp dv6205us; dual Intel CPU T2060 @ 1.6GHz ea.
It has an 80G drive, but about 50G is in a Windows partition (please don't hate me, I don't use Windows really, only my son uses it!)

I'll admit I'm confused about the whole disk partition thing. I usually run Knoppix and about 5 sda drives show up, a couple of them are about 10G each. I think 6.10 created a new sda6 partition when it installed it(ran with no real problem, although it did seem a little slow to respond).

I used KB3 to burn the disk and I don't remember the burn speed used. (I'm not sure I trust the speeds it reports on the screen anyway).

When I select the test disk option on the boot screen I get the same response: the disk seems to spin up but nothing else happens.

[oilchangeguy]

It's an hp dv6205us; dual Intel CPU T2060 @ 1.6GHz ea.
It has an 80G drive, but about 50G is in a Windows partition (please don't hate me, I don't use Windows really, only my son uses it!)

I'll admit I'm confused about the whole disk partition thing. I usually run Knoppix and about 5 sda drives show up, a couple of them are about 10G each. I think 6.10 created a new sda6 partition when it installed it(ran with no real problem, although it did seem a little slow to respond).

I used KB3 to burn the disk and I don't remember the burn speed used. (I'm not sure I trust the speeds it reports on the screen anyway).

When I select the test disk option on the boot screen I get the same response: the disk seems to spin up but nothing else happens.

you forgot to list the amount of ram.

[dwieberd]

Oh yes, and it has 500 MB of memory.

[odonovanr]

8.10 doesn't seem that convincing. I reverted back to 8.04: much better!

[dwieberd]

Thanks, I'll try 8.04.

And thanks everybody for the very quick replies!

[thraxy]

It could be a problem with the CD itself... Personally I'm sick and tired of CDs (and dodgy laptop CD-ROM drives). If you have a usb flash drive (and your computer can boot from USB), you can try installing it again using unetbootin.

I swear by unetbootin myself. The only problem is that once you figure out just how easy it is compared to CDs/DVDs you'll be itching to switch distro all the time (or at least that's my problem... lol).

You can get it at http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

If the .deb doesn't work, you can download the source file and make it executable. That should work nicely.

After that, it's only a matter of choosing the distro you want and it will be automatically downloaded and extracted to the flash drive. Or if you already have the ISO you can just load that up in unetbootin.

The obvious perks are:

A) An install from USB is a lot faster than one from CD
B) No more wasting time and money on burning and re-burning CDs

Installing Ubuntu (and various other distros) has never been easier :D

[zvacet]

@ dwieberd

You have few options:

1. download same iso with torrent and point download to the folder where your existing iso is.That way you torrent will check your iso for corrupted files and replace them if any.After that check md5sum (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM) and burn iso on CD with lower špossible speed.Then check CD integrity (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/CDIntegrityCheck?action=show&redirect=CDIntegrityCheck) and if all goes well install.

2. download Hardy alternate CD from here (http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/) with torrent,check md5sum and cd integrity and install.Use manual method to install.Here (http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/p3.htm) are instructions.

[dwieberd]

I tried the md5sum thing and it DID report a different hash number than the official expected number. I will check that first from now on. I'm using the md5sum command on a Knoppix system to check the Ubuntu iso file. That shouldn't make any difference should it?

[zvacet]

I can be wrong but I don´t see anything wrong with it.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Yesterday I successfully installed from an old 6.10 I had lying around to my HP laptop. I was impressed. Then I thought I would be able to easily upgrade from there one step at a time to the latest and greatest. Found that that didn't work as the old repositories aren't kept around. Ok, so I download the latest 8.10, burn the CD and try it: Guess what? It does absoultely nothing. Drive sounds like it's spinning up but the boot display never changes after hitting <enter>. Frustrating. Doesn't seem like progress. Is there anything I can do besides trying random combinations of boot parameters? I'm ready to experience that legendary Ubuntu support for the first time! Thanks.

You CD and CD drive likely sux, because I can burn at 40x without a problem. Sorry. :(

Or your internet connection is unstable. You may be required to speak with your ISP.

[dwieberd]

Here I am posting using my new Hardy Heron. This time the md5sum came back correct and the CD worked. It even uses the correct widescreen resolution setting for my laptop! (I have that on Knoppix also but it was a bit tricky getting it working.) Now I will try installing. Hopefully that will also go well. I'm impressed again. Thanks to everyone who helped.