Installation Errors

[Joe724]

After my laptop died, I took my old desktop computer out of the garage and dusted it off. The parts are a little old (4+) but were top of the line when I got them and relatively hardly used. My one problem is that the hard drive with windows on it had to be replaced so I don't have an operating system and figured I would try out Ubuntu. I got a ubuntu CD from a local computer store and tried it out.

After unplugging and reconnecting some loose parts inside the case, I started up BIOS and did a self-diagnostic scan to see what parts were working. Everything seemed fine with that scan. I threw in the CD and tried to install it when I got some errors. I got to the Ubuntu screen where the bar moves from left to right when suddenly the screen changed to a black screen with scrolling white text. There were literally hundreds of lines of writing so I couldn't capture them all but here's an example of what one line said.

164.1265. Buffer I/O error on device srd0. Logical erorr...

but add a few hundred lines of stuff like that and ongoing for ~20 minutes.

I restarted and tried a couple more times but nothing worked. I tried using memtest86+ from the live install cd and my computer kept getting consistent freezes at exactly 48 seconds into the process.

Since I don't have a current operating system, I don't know what to do. Was there an error when the CD was burnt (I believe it was written at 16x, and speeds such as 4x seem a lot more popular to reduce errors), is it a problem with my RAM (even though BIOS is saying it's fine), is my DVD drive shot and producing these errors?, or could it be a problem with my existing hard drive?

I'm at a loss for answers. I guess i'll start out with trying another cd (burned at a slower speed), then replace the stick of RAM, and if neither works swap out the dvd drive. Any easier ideas though? Unfortunately without a working OS to begin with, it makes this a lot more complicated...

[earthpigg]

I tried using memtest86+ from the live install cd and my computer kept getting consistent freezes at exactly 48 seconds into the process.

for memtest (iso burned from the free dload at http://www.memtest86.com/) i had the same problem with freezing on my brand-spanking-new computer, and using the old version of memtest on the CD worked perfectly (when you start it, you get a menu that gives you the choice of current version or old version). no idea why. you could give that a shot.

couple likely possible issues you are having:

bad RAM. you where correct to suspect this as a possibility from the I/O issues. that's what memtest will test for, if it works.

bad CD drive. could also explain the failure of both memtest and booting an Ubuntu LiveCD.

4 years old means it can probably boot from a USB thumb drive. take a look here: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

if booting from USB works, but booting from CD does not, then your CD drive may be dying... and those things are funny because most things with computers are either broken or not broken.... not so with CD drives. i myself have had a cd drive that i could not boot from, but otherwise worked fine.