Indefinite "scanning disks", 46%

[IGLAW]

I can run the demo off the CD, everything works great. My computer meets the requirements. Please don't ask me my specs; they are not the problem. My problem is when I start up the installer, both inside the demo and without it, I get as far the first progess bar, which goes up to "Scanning disks" at 46% and hangs there forever. I have no operating system, nothing. I completely wiped my hard drive. Are there any known incompatibilities with certain hard drives, or would formatting it a certain way solve the problem?

...

Also, I'm using whatever installer is on the main download page right now; I know that's what you were gonna ask next.

[lisati]

The "alternate" installation disk sometimes works better on some machines. I found that the "LiveCD" (the demo disk) for trying out Ubuntu worked well enough for me on my laptop to consider installing it, but found that installation went a lot smoother with the "alternate" disk.

[jerome1232]

Might want to give the alternate install cd a try. It uses a text based (think similar to the Windows installer) installer but has more options and tends to get the job done where the live cd failed.


I know my computer used to hang for a very long time while scanning disks because I had no floppy drive, but my bios was configured to say I did, so gparted would take a very, very long time to give up on scanning the non-existent floppy drive. I fixed it by going into my BIOS config utility and disabling the floppy drive. It wouldn't hurt to look at that.

[IGLAW]

I'd started downloading the alternate disk before I posted, hopefully that solves the problem.

I've really tried to get into the Ubuntu thing; XP's been bugging the crap out of me for years. But it always screws up one way or another. /:

Thanks for the quick replies.