Compaq Presario & 8.10 problem

[doctorzaius]

Ok, so I was pumped to try out Ubuntu and make the move from Windows XP, however, it has not been a smooth transition at all. I downloaded the .iso and did the mkd5 checksum, everything checked out fine. Rebooting and running the livecd worked fine, albeit slow as expected. So, I decided to make the leap and install it permanently (after saving all important files to CD of course).

Now on to my problem. Everything seemed to install fine, but after I typed in my username and password on the main screen, I was presented with a nice beige-ish screen and a cursor that I could move around...and that was it. I thought, "Ok, it's that old ACPI problem again" (I tried different distros over the years, and always had problems with what I believed to be ACPI on that system). I've tried hitting esc at the grub boot and editing the kernel line to amend "acpi=off noapic nolapic" but to no avail...it still doesn't load past the login screen after I log on.

Any ideas at all would be greatly appreciated (please be gentle, I'm kind of new to this).

***CPU SPECS***

Compaq Presario 1110NX
2.5Ghz Intel Celeron
Ubuntu 8.10

[doctorzaius]

Seems there's a ton of other people with installation problems (makes me rethink the validity of Ubuntu as a true competitor to Windows in the home market).

Anyhow, I for anyone else with this problem try the Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Alternate Installation CD (you can find links to this from the ubuntu website). It seemed to take forever to install, but I am typing this response from a seemingly fine installation.

One thing to mention: when installing it said "Scanning mirror..." and hung up for quite awhile (over 25 minutes). It only progressed past here when I unplugged my modem. Hope this helps someone out, good luck!