11.04 Live CD won't boot

[trentgillham]

I am trying to put Ubuntu 11.04 on my Dad's old Toshiba Satellite M45 S169. I am just going to wipe Windows XP; however when I select the DVD drive from the boot menu the CD freezes at a line of text.

All it is says is ISOLINUX, the date, and Peter Anvil or something like that. I tried the Alternate CD and tried using Wubi. Nothing works. Any ideas?

[Beacon11]

That step does take a minute. Does the drive actually spin down, or does it sound like it's still doing stuff?

[trentgillham]

It spins down completely. I left the computer on while we went out for a few hours, came back and it still did not load.

[Beacon11]

Oh well, yeah that does sound like a problem! You could have downloaded a bad image (check MD5) or burned a bad copy. To check the latter you can either try the CD in another computer, or try burning another copy on the slowest setting possible. Let me know if you have any luck with that!

[trentgillham]

I have checked all the CD's I used. They all boot perfectly in all my other computers.

And when I hit enter on the DVD Drive in the boot menu it goes straight to that ISOLINUX text. I have try pressing every key to no avail.

I have updated the bios to the newest version, I even tried installing an older version of Ubuntu to upgrade to Natty, but got stuck on the same screen as well.

[rbowen1]

Sounds like the hardware in your Dad's old Toshiba Satellite cannot handle Ubuntu. You might want to try a Ubuntu-Desktop-Minimal install. Check out this thread for details.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9834517#post9834517

[trentgillham]

Thanks, I am going to try that method now.

[Beacon11]

I'm not sure rbowen1, it isn't really to the point where it's really running Ubuntu, and this user seems to have it installed: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1184072. trent, have you tried any other livecds in that laptop? Perhaps it would be worth trying to boot from a flash drive.

[cercopithecoid]

I'm new to this and I have no idea whether or not this is applicable. I was having the same problem installing to a Macbook 5,2. What worked for me was using the alternate install distro and pressing "esc" as the first lines of text were appearing. I also shut down, removed the power cord, and removed the battery before boot to make sure the memory wasn't messing something up.

[trentgillham]

Minimal Install CD does the same thing. It gets stuck at that ISOLINUX text. Any other ideas?

[Beacon11]

I really would try the flash drive approach, as it could have something to do with how your CDROM drive is setup in the BIOS.

[trentgillham]

I'm not sure rbowen1, it isn't really to the point where it's really running Ubuntu, and this user seems to have it installed: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1184072. trent, have you tried any other livecds in that laptop? Perhaps it would be worth trying to boot from a flash drive.

Yes I have tried several CD's, the alternate cd, an older version of Ubuntu, probably burned 6 different live CD's. I ran a BIOS update from a CD. It can read CD's.

This is too old to boot from Flash Drives I believe. It hasn't worked.

[Beacon11]

If the flash drive approach fails, here's another idea (assuming you can still boot XP). Install Ubuntu via Wubi, and then migrate to a real partition and get rid of Windows. Check this out: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1519354

[trentgillham]

I have installed Ubuntu 11.04 with Wubi. It shows up on the applications list in XP, but I cannot select it when I boot. How would I make the bootloader recognize it?

I want to make sure Ubuntu works properly on the laptop before wiping XP.

[Beacon11]

I want to make sure Ubuntu works properly on the laptop before wiping XP.

Good call. That what the LiveCD SHOULD have done :P .

Interesting... Wubi should have added a boot option on its own. The install seemed to go alright though? Have a look at http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/20340/how-to-restore-the-wubi-ubuntu-bootloader/ .

[sanderj]

I am trying to put Ubuntu 11.04 on my Dad's old Toshiba Satellite M45 S169. I am just going to wipe Windows XP; however when I select the DVD drive from the boot menu the CD freezes at a line of text.

All it is says is ISOLINUX, the date, and Peter Anvil or something like that. I tried the Alternate CD and tried using Wubi. Nothing works. Any ideas?

This is what I usually do when a live-CD won't boot 'through': in the first Ubuntu screen, press F6 for boot options. Remove the last two options (quiet and splash?), and then go to the other options (ACPI, APIC, etc) and turn them off. Then boot and see if it works.

Oh, BTW: it might help if you post a picture of the halted boot process.

[Beacon11]

... in the first Ubuntu screen...

Sanderj, I don't think he actually got to that point...

[trentgillham]

Good call. That what the LiveCD SHOULD have done :P .

Interesting... Wubi should have added a boot option on its own. The install seemed to go alright though? Have a look at http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/20340/how-to-restore-the-wubi-ubuntu-bootloader/ .

That program cannot load boot configuration data. Says it will not work in XP-only environments.

And it installed fine with Wubi, no errors.

Should I try to install another bootloader?

UPDATE: NOW reinstalling with Wubi just to make sure.

[Beacon11]

That program cannot load boot configuration data. Says it will not work in XP-only environments.

Oh I'm sorry, I should have caught that. Can you paste in the C:/boot.ini file here please?

[trentgillham]

Think I fixed the problem. Crossing my fingers. It seems that msconfig.exe was messed with by my father. It had weird boot settings. I reverted it back to the normal boot settings and installed with Wubi. It is running Ubuntu now and finishing the install.
Will keep you updated.

[Beacon11]

Think I fixed the problem. Crossing my fingers. It seems that msconfig.exe was messed with by my father. It had weird boot settings. I reverted it back to the normal boot settings and installed with Wubi. It is running Ubuntu now and finishing the install.
Will keep you updated.

Great! Please do.

[trentgillham]

It works fine. All the hardware worked without manual install, just a little slow. Going to use unity 2d to help.

[Beacon11]

It works fine. All the hardware worked without manual install, just a little slow. Going to use unity 2d to help.

Good to hear. Let us know if you need any more help!

[trentgillham]

Ok I need some help, the network manager worked when I started it up for the first few times. Now it wont connect. Any ideas how to fix it?

[Beacon11]

Ok I need some help, the network manager worked when I started it up for the first few times. Now it wont connect. Any ideas how to fix it?

Hmm... how are you connecting? Wireless? You may want to start a new thread for the new problem (it would get more eyes).

[rbowen1]

I agree with Beacon11. Solve out this thread as the problem booting to a live CD has been resolved. Thread tools on the top has the option to solve this thread. Since running so slow, you may still want to use the Minimal install instructions.

[cabanas]

I am trying to put Ubuntu 11.04 on my Dad's old Toshiba Satellite M45 S169. I am just going to wipe Windows XP; however when I select the DVD drive from the boot menu the CD freezes at a line of text.

All it is says is ISOLINUX, the date, and Peter Anvil or something like that. I tried the Alternate CD and tried using Wubi. Nothing works. Any ideas?


Hi there,
I'm no expert but i had same problems; CDLive won't boot or even install, not from the interactive user interface nor from the text installation mode, some times i had a linux kernell panic error while trying; i tried to boot and install ubuntu 11.04 from usb following instructions from the ubuntu website and didn't work either. I spend some time looking around because I'm tired of windows death blue screens messing around with my patience and my harddisks.
Finally I found another simple way arround, it may not be visually as atractive as installing from the interactive cd, but it worked.

There you go:
1- I download an iso image from http://ubuntustudio.org/ .
This is a version of ubuntu 11.04 Natty the only dirference is the theme aplied by default to the desktop and some design aplications that you may choose to install or not during the installation procces. If i were you, i would not select any and if you need them, you can alwayns install the freely afterwards from the software centre. The iso file is about 1.5 GB, smaller than the 4.1 of the livecd.

2- Once it is installed and running, if you don't like the look of it and you want to have the UBUNTU desktop defaults with Unity, then go to aplications-system and launch the SYNAPTIC PACKAGES, you may see there is a search box, look for 'Ubuntu desktop' package, doble click on it and apply, accept to install the list of packages that may pop up as well.

3- If something weird happens like two set of menus at the same time don't panic, just log out and log in again, but this time make sure you select UBUNTU session (not classic, not user defined, not rescue...) from the unfolding menu at the botom before writting your password.


It worked for me, every feature from the unity desktop is working, even the mail accounts and the chat accounts that you can configure with facebook or tweeter or gmail or gtalk, the nice floating scroll bars, the notification area is not blocked and you won't need to follow and wrtite any unknown lines on your terminal to unlock it, the launch bar is working as it is suppose to, and i can have now Windows 7 (it is difficult to scape from it if you need autocad) running virtually from ubuntu, so if it crashes, and we now it does a lot, no hard disk is harmed.

Hope it is of any help.

[mugbomb]

make a cd from ubuntu secured remix from this site:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuSecuredRemix
go there and see the functions its really good i spend more than a day cracking my head to install ubuntu on my pc, and i finally got it when i tried that version.
try yourself and tells us how it worked.
good luck

[Beacon11]

trentgillham, please mark this thread as SOLVED so cabanas and mugbomb don't dedicate any time to trying to fix a problem that has been fixed. Cabanas and mugbomb, it would be nice if you read other posts before supplying solutions-- you would have noticed this thread was solved and wouldn't dilute the answers.