Ubuntu won't even attempt to install.

[TheSaber]

So I choose a language at the boot screen, and go to install ubuntu. I press enter once I highlight that option, and nothing happens. So I go to hit enter on every other item, and none of them work except the final option, boot from hard drive, which starts Windows XP up, which I'm actually trying to avoid. My computer has been having problems, but I doubt that would have any bearing on it at least trying to install.

[melissanikol]

I'm having the exact same issue—anyone know what's going on? I searched the forums and couldn't find anything that worked.

[whoop]

Nothing happens? You get no error messages? Just a black screen? Is there any cd activity? Have you tried the alternate cd install?

[Herber]

Why don't you give the text based installer a try?

[zeex]

I'm having the exact same issue—anyone know what's going on? I searched the forums and couldn't find anything that worked.

Hi,

Make sure your CD drive is working fine, try other CDs, preferably bootable CD to check. This 'll rule out hardware issues.

Try the same CD on someone a different system. Just to check if there is any problem in CD.

I 've seen this before Ubuntu live CD was working fine on my desktop but won't boot in my friends laptop. Don't 've any explanation though.

[pricetech]

I had that problem. It turned out to be a bad CD. Choose the option to check the media. (I don't recall the exact wording)

Hopefully yours will be the same problem as mine.

[melissanikol]

Well that's the thing—I couldn't choose the option to check the media, because the only one I could select was "boot from first hard disk" or whatever. I could use the arrow keys to highlight the others but pressing Enter didn't do anything.

However, I just retried it before checking replies to this thread. I entered the text-based installer, pressed Enter, and immediately got something like, "Invalid or corrupt kernel image." Strangely, I performed an md5sum check before burning the .iso to a CD and they matched up. I checked the same .iso file, which I kept on my computer just in case, just now, and they did not match. I'm not sure what the deal is there...

Anyway, I'm currently re-downloading the .iso (this time I'm torrenting it, rather than getting it from the same server as last time) and I'll let you know how it goes. :)

[pricetech]

Well that's the thing—I couldn't choose the option to check the media, because the only one I could select was "boot from first hard disk" or whatever. I could use the arrow keys to highlight the others but pressing Enter didn't do anything.

You did say that. My bad, I missed it. But yeah it looks like a corrupt ISO or a bad burn to disk. You're on the right track with a fresh download.

Does your burner software offer to check the disk after burning ?? If so, check that option.

Best of luck.

[melissanikol]

Happy to say that I'm running Ubuntu now. :D

A fresh burn did it, so @OP, I suggest you download the .iso again (possibly from a different server?), perform the md5sum check, and burn it again. I burned on the lowest speed possible as was suggested in another thread regarding a similar problem, so that's definitely worth trying. Then reboot and see if it works! :)

[pricetech]

Happy to say that I'm running Ubuntu now. :D

Glad to hear it. I try to blame all my coasters on the disks I'm using, especially since I didn't buy them.