clean install no cd

[davebridges]

I normally do a clean install rather than an upgrade, but somewhere around 8.10 ish my cd drive stopped working (i think it was a baby stuffing things inside issue, not a software issue). What is the best way to do a clean install with a wonky cd drive

[Synthros]

This might help:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation

About halfway down the page, there is a section dedicated to installing Ubuntu without a CD.

[davebridges]

I have a more serious problem now. I tried booting from an install partition as per the above link and it crashed during the re-partitioning. Now i get a grub error 22 when i try to startup and can get no further. Please tell me my laptop is not bricked now

[bladeswords]

have you considered doing a PXE boot? Do you have another computer that you could use to help out with the install?

[meeples]

booting from a usb flash drive would be the easiest way i would think :)

[meeples]

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick :D

[davebridges]

unfortunately the usb drives havent been working in a while either.

[bladeswords]

I had the same problem and I recently got Jaunty installed using only the network. So if you have another computer that you can use you have a good chance that you can do your install over the network.

http://hugi.to/blog/archive/2006/12/23/ubuntu-pxe-install-via-windows This is the guide that I used.

[davebridges]

i actually ended up swapping in a functional cd drive, and that worked fantastic. thanks for the suggestions