[Sony Vaio X1] "(initramfs) Unable to find a medium containing a live file system"

[Arc Linegod]

Good day!

I'm really new to Ubuntu. After seeing a friend run it on his laptop, I decided to give it a shot. I downloaded the Ubuntu Netbook version, checked its MD5 checksum, and used the recommended .iso to USB flashdrive tool.

Everything seemed to go well until after the Ubuntu 10.10 screen where I encountered the message "(initramfs) Unable to find a medium containing a live file system". I looked everywhere, even around this forum, tried the proposed solutions, but still, the problem persists.

I'm using a Sony Vaio X1 laptop with a 128GB solid state drive. I was wondering if the solid state drive was causing the problem. Does anyone have a suggestion on how I can get this to work? Any help is much appreciated!

[Sean Moran]

Good day!

I'm really new to Ubuntu. After seeing a friend run it on his laptop, I decided to give it a shot. I downloaded the Ubuntu Netbook version, checked its MD5 checksum, and used the recommended .iso to USB flashdrive tool.

Everything seemed to go well until after the Ubuntu 10.10 screen where I encountered the message "(initramfs) Unable to find a medium containing a live file system". I looked everywhere, even around this forum, tried the proposed solutions, but still, the problem persists.

I'm using a Sony Vaio X1 laptop with a 128GB solid state drive. I was wondering if the solid state drive was causing the problem. Does anyone have a suggestion on how I can get this to work? Any help is much appreciated!
I've never had the pleasure of installing anything on a netbook, (I assume a machine sans CD-ROM), as I've always had either a desktop or this laptop to start out with Live-CDs, and then progress to the USB stage when I know everything else is working. I hope that someone with more knowledge than I on the Netbook Edition can provide more effective solutions than I. Also, I believe that the netbook edition comes as an .img file, rather than a plain old .iso, but I assume you refer to the tool as an .iso, rather than the actual .img file.

I'm not an expert on Netbooks.

Anyway, is it possible to test the USB you've made on another machine? That might indicate that it is a problem with the USB drive, and narrow down the range of possible problems.

Secondly, is there a machine available which can boot from a CD-ROM and also has a USB socket, and is online, because we could probably run up a good working Live-USB using unetbootin if all else fails.

First of all, I hope that someone can see the answer with the netbook issue, and point you in the right direction, but if you've got a laptop or desktop that's online, w/cd-rom, w/usb, you should be able to use unetbootin to create some sort of live-usb from the standard .iso.

[Arc Linegod]

Much thanks!
The netbook version that I got from the website comes in a .iso format. I tried to burn it on a DVD and used the DVD on an external DVD-ROM drive, but I get the same error. Unfortunately, I do not have any other computers which I can use to test it out. :(

[Sean Moran]

Much thanks!
The netbook version that I got from the website comes in a .iso format. I tried to burn it on a DVD and used the DVD on an external DVD-ROM drive, but I get the same error. Unfortunately, I do not have any other computers which I can use to test it out. :(
I'm sorry mate. I'f you're running a standard Ubuntu .iso off a CD (not DVD but I don't know if it matters), and you still can't get a good GUI to startup from that Live-CD, then I can't think of an answer. I hope someone else more experienced can help from here. It's not meant to be such a problem, and Sony Vaio is fairly common, so whatever isn't working must be a simple thing, but I am afraid that I don't know the answer. Good luck and my apoilogies. I don't know how else to help from here.