pling
September 15th, 2010, 04:48 PM
The hardware is a brand new HP/Compaq Mini Note Netbookj (Atom CPU, Ion LE, 1GB RAM, 160GB HD, XP installed, no CD - hardware that I know worked Ubuntu 9.) I've given Ubuntu a 2GB-ish swap (whatever the default setting was) and 118GB of Ext2 under /
1. I tried 10.4 Netbook first. Downloaded, checked MD5, ran live - was fine except for needing drivers for wireless and Ion, found plug-in wireless that I was going to use to download drivers. So I rebooted - still fine. Switched off, did stuff, came back later - and Ubuntu never succeeded in rebooting again, not even in Recovery mode.
2. So I googled, concluded I had a freak bad install, and installed Netbook over itself again by opting for manual partition during install. I reformed the prior Netbook partition as Ext2 and mounted as / and left Swap alone. The result was exactly the same as 1, except - and this is really evil - **now the machine would no longer boot from USB pen unless I went into the grub shell during boot, then inserted the pen, ls-ed the pen, then exit-ed**. I'm obviously concerned that this might stop working too, given the tendency of stuff to work once or twice and then fail.
3. So I tried this method to install desktop 10.4.1. Again I checked the checksum. I updated before closing. I got one reboot out of the machine, but it was a very awkward one - I went through a recovery menu and had to log in on the cmd line and use xstart
At this point I can only say WTF??? I'd like to be able to get Ubuntu running - even an older version - but I'll settle for just giving the hard drive space back to XP and wiping Ubuntu off my system. In fact, I suspect that getting rid of all traces of my previous installs is the first thing to do before trying another version of Ubuntu - or even Fedora or whatever.
So, questions -
- Can anyone see where I went wrong?
- Does anyone have any idea what is happening, so that a machine can run ok Live, boot once, and then hangs eternally during future boots?
- Does anyone have any idea why I could no longer boot from USB except via grub (I could no longer get at the boot menu to select USB - if I pressed ESC to bring that menu up the machine would just hang.)
- Is this http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=508927 the best way to remove Ubuntu and is that what I should do next?
- Is there anything else I should try to install Ubuntu 10.4 or should I give up?
1. I tried 10.4 Netbook first. Downloaded, checked MD5, ran live - was fine except for needing drivers for wireless and Ion, found plug-in wireless that I was going to use to download drivers. So I rebooted - still fine. Switched off, did stuff, came back later - and Ubuntu never succeeded in rebooting again, not even in Recovery mode.
2. So I googled, concluded I had a freak bad install, and installed Netbook over itself again by opting for manual partition during install. I reformed the prior Netbook partition as Ext2 and mounted as / and left Swap alone. The result was exactly the same as 1, except - and this is really evil - **now the machine would no longer boot from USB pen unless I went into the grub shell during boot, then inserted the pen, ls-ed the pen, then exit-ed**. I'm obviously concerned that this might stop working too, given the tendency of stuff to work once or twice and then fail.
3. So I tried this method to install desktop 10.4.1. Again I checked the checksum. I updated before closing. I got one reboot out of the machine, but it was a very awkward one - I went through a recovery menu and had to log in on the cmd line and use xstart
At this point I can only say WTF??? I'd like to be able to get Ubuntu running - even an older version - but I'll settle for just giving the hard drive space back to XP and wiping Ubuntu off my system. In fact, I suspect that getting rid of all traces of my previous installs is the first thing to do before trying another version of Ubuntu - or even Fedora or whatever.
So, questions -
- Can anyone see where I went wrong?
- Does anyone have any idea what is happening, so that a machine can run ok Live, boot once, and then hangs eternally during future boots?
- Does anyone have any idea why I could no longer boot from USB except via grub (I could no longer get at the boot menu to select USB - if I pressed ESC to bring that menu up the machine would just hang.)
- Is this http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=508927 the best way to remove Ubuntu and is that what I should do next?
- Is there anything else I should try to install Ubuntu 10.4 or should I give up?