unusual installation

[jtmedin]

Have an old notebook (compaq presario 2500, intel cpu 2.4g, 80g hd, usb, cd ... . However the cd is not reliable & fails trying to install. Tried a usb drive but bios doesnt allow a boot to the usb drive. Think the notebook has plenty of power to run ubuntu but stuck tring to install ubuntu. Anyone got any ideas? TIA

[snowpine]

I would recommend recycling the old pentium 4 XP machine and upgrading to non-broken hardware that meets or exceeds the minimum hardware requirements: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements/

Here's a blog article with tips on tracking down affordable used hardware: http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/10/30/howto-find-an-old-computer/

[jtmedin]

No thanks, u will notice the 2500 exceeds all the requirements except a reliable cd drive and able to boot to a usb drive. When installed it should provide a good if not speedy notebook. Anybody else got any ideas? TIA
Forgot to mention it is currently running windows xp :-(.

[25tom]

If you can get the CD drive to boot the PLOP boot manager (just download the PLOP boot manager iso, burn to CD and boot from that), then that'll give your computer the temporary ability to boot from USB...

http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/index.html

Hope this helps :)

[robert shearer]

Your options seem limited...
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation

Only other suggestion would be to remove the Hard-drive and temporarily install it as the only drive on another working machine, then install Ubuntu and return the drive to the original machine.

Ubuntu is quite happy moving hardware though you may be dropped to command line while you install any graphics drivers for the machine it is moved too.

[jtmedin]

Thought of that. Have a lenovo notebook but was unable to get to the HD. Tried to find hardware service manual to get into the lenevo but was unable to get one from lenevo. Not like HP which has things like that online :-(.

[robert shearer]

Thought of that. Have a lenovo notebook but was unable to get to the HD. Tried to find hardware service manual to get into the lenevo but was unable to get one from lenevo. Not like HP which has things like that online :-(.

Do you have a Desktop pc...?
You could use an adaptor to temporarily move the hard drive there and install...

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=HD-108

http://www.pcworld.com/article/250316/install_an_old_laptop_hard_drive_in_your_desktop.h tml

[ciscoboy]

I've got something that's really simple and it probably won't work, but just in case it does... you may want to try getting yourself an external CD drive that uses USB ports. I also have a laptop and I tried installing ubuntu using a usb flash drive i don't know how many times, without success. Then I got myself a external CD/DVD drive with the installer on a disc, and it worked on the first try for me. Only problem for you is, if your laptop won't accept a flash drive, chances are, it won't accept a CD drive.

Just food for thought.

CiscoBoy

[jtmedin]

Ok i applied plop to my HD & started to install 12.04 from a USB but half way thru the install i got an error on the HD. Now i think i need to reformat that HD, so how can i do that from a floppy or usb or ... .? TIA