LiveCD starts installation by itself and stops at error

[yc2]

A friend of mine has asked me to install Ubuntu for a long time. Today I set up his partitions with Lucid LiveCD and GParted.

However, the LiveCd throws an error that makes me hesitant to continue.

If I boot a LiveCD on my computer I get a question meaning "run Live or install?"

This question does not appear on my friends computer. The first thing you see (about 2 min after boot) is an alertpanel saying something like "The installer encountered an unrecoverable error. We will now set up a desktop environment so you can investigate the problem." After that the normal Lucid (Live) desktop appears and functions well, as far as I can understand.

Sorry for not being able to give more data about my friends system. It is a stationary computer about 2 yrs old, running XP. I can't really make investigations on his system either. I had hoped to go there next time and just install Lucid.

Maybe one should try the alternate installer, but my friend just got used to the LiveCD and I would therefore like to use the LiveCD.

I don't understand why it seems to start installation by itself.

Most of all. I wonder if it is a good idea to run the installation from the desktop icon? Maybe it will encounter the same error that the LiveCd seems to encounter at startup?

[dabl]

It may just be a problem with his optical drive reading the CD.

The Alternate Install CD will work fine, and install the same desktop as he likes on the Live CD. Since it doesn't have the "live desktop" feature, there are more packages on the Alternate Install CD. Also, the Alternate Install CD does not have the Ubiquity installer, so you would be well advised to do any partition-shrinking and/or partitioning in advance of using the Alternate Install CD. That way you can simply choose "manual partitioning" and then you will only need to select the partitions and mount points, and it will proceed with installation as you direct it.

[yc2]

Thanks for reply.

I am just burning an alternate disc. There is probably a possibility that it will work better. Partitions have already been set up. I will probably give this disc a try next time I visit the nice elderly couple interested in computers.

Motto "Nothing could happen that fixmbr won't cure" ;)

Edit: "Optical drive" sounds like a good explanation. The alternate disc has an option "test cd" so it is a good idea.

[yc2]

Should maybe give report on how it ended:

I burnt an alternate CD, ran "test disc" and installed (allocated partitions manually) from it.

Installation and systems works fine.