Failed Upgrade, Failed Clean Install... Ideas?

[windfix]

I did an upgrade from 11.10 to 12.04 on an older Gateway laptop (Celeron, 2 Gig RAM) and it appeared to go fine. However, on reboot it hangs at the Ubuntu logo screen after GRUB menu.

Oddly, I have also tried a clean install from both USB and CD... and both are failing. They hang at the Ubuntu logo screen after selecting Install Ubuntu - and after 2-3 minutes of disk activity. I have tried USB 2 and USB 3 flash drives, creating the live USB from both unetbootin and from Startup Disk Creator. I am using the 32-bit ISO.

Why would this machine suddenly become un-installable? I've run Ubuntu on it for 3 years already.

Edit/Addition: I was finally able to install from CD; however it still craps out on the Ubuntu logo screen when I try to boot. I did get error messages referencing the Broadcom B43 driver, and suggesting to follow the instructions at http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/...devicefirmware. Unfortunately, if I boot in recovery mode (from GRUB), and attempt "sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer" it can not download the package (I do have a live ethernet connection). Tried switching off wifi card, then booting, but no joy.

[windfix]

OK, solved by my Unix wizard pal. Here's the deal: B43 is the driver for the broadcom wifi card, firmware-b43-installer is the firmware. The former is useless, and likely causes the lockup, until the latter is installed. So, here's how:

1. Boot to recovery mode (select from GRUB menu)
2. remount the root partition as read/write:

   mount -o remount,rw /dev/sda1

   (or whatever your root partition is)
3. Activate ethernet manually:

   ifconfig eth0 up

4. Now do:

   dhclient eth0

5. now:

   apt-get install firmware-b43-installer

And lastly, reboot.

[mkstallings1]

Thank you so much for this. I have been at a loss for days as to why I couldn't do a fresh install of 12.04 and get it to boot.