BIG Installation Problem

[Palartzski]

hey everyone! this is a rather long (and complicated) story, but i will attempt to keep it as short as possible. i originally had windows 7 installed on my laptop and i was hoping to be able to dual boot between windows 7 and ubuntu. although there are easier ways to do this (doing a wubi install or a virtual machine), i was just going to directly install both onto my hdd. once i had installed ubuntu however, im not exactly sure how this happened, but it had installed with the minimum amount of space as possible. therefore, when i tried to install updates for ubuntu, there was not enough room for that! i should also mention that with the installation of ubuntu came something that was called GRUB, which prompted me to select which OS i wanted to use each time i turned on my pc (i was never exactly sure what GRUB was though). i figured the best way to resolve this was to resize the windows partition on the hdd, which would opt for more room for the ubuntu partition. to keep another long story short, i was not able to resize the windows partition through either windows or ubuntu and had to resolve to using a third-party partition manager. i found a a few around the net, but i decided to give partition wizard (http://www.partitionwizard.com/) a try.
the program was not an actual app for windows, it had to be booted off a cd upon start up. when the program had finished shrinking the windows partition and i rebooted the computer, GRUB would not initialize (it said that there was an "Error 17"). when i looked back upon the ubuntu partition, i noticed that it still existed, but there was no data left in it. after a long and hectic part of this story, i ended up wiping my entire hdd and creating 2 partitions, one for windows and one for ubuntu. windows actually installed without a problem. now, each time i try installed ubuntu, it tells me that it could not read the CD ("Boot CD error"). i know that my CD drive is in working order. i am able to reach the ubuntu installation screen, but cant actually start the installation. although it might seem to be as easy as burning the CD again, i wanted to make sure about this. i tried reburning the iso image onto another cd, but was given the same error. i then looked back and noticed that both CD's were by the same manufacturer (Memorex). however, i was also thinking that it might still have something to do with the hdd because in between the GRUB error and wiping the hdd clean, i also tried to restore the MBR to see if that would solve any problems (which i later realized was a really bad idea). would this problem have anything to do with the MBR still, or is it as simple as just being the CD-R manufacturer at fault (which would mean to just use a different brand cd-r)? any help with this would be immensely appreciated!

[presence1960]

hey everyone! this is a rather long (and complicated) story, but i will attempt to keep it as short as possible. i originally had windows 7 installed on my laptop and i was hoping to be able to dual boot between windows 7 and ubuntu. although there are easier ways to do this (doing a wubi install or a virtual machine), i was just going to directly install both onto my hdd. once i had installed ubuntu however, im not exactly sure how this happened, but it had installed with the minimum amount of space as possible. therefore, when i tried to install updates for ubuntu, there was not enough room for that! i should also mention that with the installation of ubuntu came something that was called GRUB, which prompted me to select which OS i wanted to use each time i turned on my pc (i was never exactly sure what GRUB was though). i figured the best way to resolve this was to resize the windows partition on the hdd, which would opt for more room for the ubuntu partition. to keep another long story short, i was not able to resize the windows partition through either windows or ubuntu and had to resolve to using a third-party partition manager. i found a a few around the net, but i decided to give partition wizard (http://www.partitionwizard.com/) a try.
the program was not an actual app for windows, it had to be booted off a cd upon start up. when the program had finished shrinking the windows partition and i rebooted the computer, GRUB would not initialize (it said that there was an "Error 17"). when i looked back upon the ubuntu partition, i noticed that it still existed, but there was no data left in it. after a long and hectic part of this story, i ended up wiping my entire hdd and creating 2 partitions, one for windows and one for ubuntu. windows actually installed without a problem. now, each time i try installed ubuntu, it tells me that it could not read the CD ("Boot CD error"). i know that my CD drive is in working order. i am able to reach the ubuntu installation screen, but cant actually start the installation. although it might seem to be as easy as burning the CD again, i wanted to make sure about this. i tried reburning the iso image onto another cd, but was given the same error. i then looked back and noticed that both CD's were by the same manufacturer (Memorex). however, i was also thinking that it might still have something to do with the hdd because in between the GRUB error and wiping the hdd clean, i also tried to restore the MBR to see if that would solve any problems (which i later realized was a really bad idea). would this problem have anything to do with the MBR still, or is it as simple as just being the CD-R manufacturer at fault (which would mean to just use a different brand cd-r)? any help with this would be immensely appreciated!
When booting off a CD/DVD or USB disk the MBR of the internal hard drive plays absolutely no role in that. So I would look at your iso and CD & optical drive as the culprit. Did you MD5SUM (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM) the iso prior to burning as an image to CD? Burn the iso as an image to CD at no more than 8x speed. When you boot the CD choose "check disk for defects" prior to doing anything else. If all that checks out the problem may be your optical drive. Check to make sure all connections from optical drive to mobo and optical drive to PSU are seated properly. As a last resort you can try cleaning the optical drive.

Can you now boot windows? If not boot the windows install DVD and follow the directions here (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1014708) for your version of windows. This will restore windows to MBR and allow you to boot windows until you can install ubuntu. This will allow you to see if it reads the windows DVD- if it boots the windows DVD then it may be your CD that has ubuntu is faulty.

[darkod]

Try to burn the cd at low speed, max 8x, even better at 4x. Also make sure you are telling the computer to boot from the cd, not the hdd.

On another note, when you said you created two partitions, for windows and ubuntu, usually you would need to delete the second one. The ubuntu installer is creating the partitions it needs, don't worry about it. You should have just created a parition for windows and install it there. Leave the rest of the disk as unallocated unpartitioned space. The ubuntu installer will take care of the rest.

[gjoellee]

hey everyone! this is a rather long (and complicated) story, but i will attempt to keep it as short as possible. i originally had windows 7 installed on my laptop and i was hoping to be able to dual boot between windows 7 and ubuntu. although there are easier ways to do this (doing a wubi install or a virtual machine), i was just going to directly install both onto my hdd. once i had installed ubuntu however, im not exactly sure how this happened, but it had installed with the minimum amount of space as possible. therefore, when i tried to install updates for ubuntu, there was not enough room for that! i should also mention that with the installation of ubuntu came something that was called GRUB, which prompted me to select which OS i wanted to use each time i turned on my pc (i was never exactly sure what GRUB was though). i figured the best way to resolve this was to resize the windows partition on the hdd, which would opt for more room for the ubuntu partition. to keep another long story short, i was not able to resize the windows partition through either windows or ubuntu and had to resolve to using a third-party partition manager. i found a a few around the net, but i decided to give partition wizard (http://www.partitionwizard.com/) a try.
the program was not an actual app for windows, it had to be booted off a cd upon start up. when the program had finished shrinking the windows partition and i rebooted the computer, GRUB would not initialize (it said that there was an "Error 17"). when i looked back upon the ubuntu partition, i noticed that it still existed, but there was no data left in it. after a long and hectic part of this story, i ended up wiping my entire hdd and creating 2 partitions, one for windows and one for ubuntu. windows actually installed without a problem. now, each time i try installed ubuntu, it tells me that it could not read the CD ("Boot CD error"). i know that my CD drive is in working order. i am able to reach the ubuntu installation screen, but cant actually start the installation. although it might seem to be as easy as burning the CD again, i wanted to make sure about this. i tried reburning the iso image onto another cd, but was given the same error. i then looked back and noticed that both CD's were by the same manufacturer (Memorex). however, i was also thinking that it might still have something to do with the hdd because in between the GRUB error and wiping the hdd clean, i also tried to restore the MBR to see if that would solve any problems (which i later realized was a really bad idea). would this problem have anything to do with the MBR still, or is it as simple as just being the CD-R manufacturer at fault (which would mean to just use a different brand cd-r)? any help with this would be immensely appreciated!

Breaking you text up in paragraphs will make it easier to read, and more people will read it....I am not reading the block of text...[-(

Remember this for next time, and more people may answer you ;)

[presence1960]

On another note, when you said you created two partitions, for windows and ubuntu, usually you would need to delete the second one. The ubuntu installer is creating the partitions it needs, don't worry about it. You should have just created a parition for windows and install it there. Leave the rest of the disk as unallocated unpartitioned space. The ubuntu installer will take care of the rest.

+1

at the partitioner window choose Use largest continuous free space and the installer will set up ubuntu on the unallocated space darko mentioned. That is the simplest way to do it.