Gparted will boot from cd but not ubuntu

[Joel_]

I am a noob to linux so please be easy on me.
I recently got a raspberry pi and I love the raspian system. So I grabbed an old dead laptop and I am trying to install ubuntu, or any linux distro at this point. The laptop is a toshiba M45. It is ancient and slow. I copied ubuntu 12.04 onto a usb and tried to boot, no joy. So I copied it to a dvd, no joy. I did to the md5sum to check its validity and it checks out. I did get the drive fitness tester to boot, and it said the hdd was good. So i tried the puppy distro on a cdrom. It loaded the first line which said "isolinux 4.05 0x50328bd7 etcd copyright (c) 1994-2011 H. peter anvin et al" and then it just sat there. So i made a bootable gparted disc, it booted up fine and I formatted the entire drive to ext4 and it all seemed fine. Again I tried puppy, ubuntu, and even a ubuntu minimal with no success. Now I am fairly sure that this could very well be another hardware problem but why can I boot some cd's and not others. I have looked through the help files on ubuntu, checking all the md5sum hashes and they all are good. I checked that the Iso was burned correctly on all of the disc's. I have gone through the bios (pheonix 1.5) and set the cd to boot first. no joy. If I restart the computer with nothing in the drive it loads to a command prompt that reads 1234F: but I can't write anything.

Is there anything that I can try or should I gut this thing for the lcd and make a rpi laptop!

Thanks for the help

[whitesmith]

First, welcome to the forum! Have you tried lubuntu? That distro is intended for older systems like yours. As to why gparted would boot and not Linux, keep in mind that the two are doing different things. An operating system is vastly more complex than any utility, and makes different BIOS calls as well. Also, are you saying you can't change the boot order to make CDs boot first? This setting should be made standard so you can boot from a CD without standing on your head. Regards.

[Joel_]

Thanks for the quick response! I have not tried lubuntu, but I am downloading it now.

I was able to change the boot order on my bios, sorry that I did not make that clear. I will let you know how lubuntu works shortly.

Thanks again

[Joel_]

Lubuntu is downloaded and the image is made on a cd. Now it is doing something new. When the computer boots up it spins up the cd and it thinks for about 15 seconds, then it reboots again, over and over.

I think the computer is a lost cause. Is there anything else I should try?

[Bashing-om]

Joel_; Hi !

Two things pop to mind.
Did you verify the .iso file's integrity ?
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM

How much ram do you have installed ? There is a minimum amount even Lubuntu must have in order to operate (even load).

In the event that Lubuntu is not install-able, there exist many even lighter versions, for instance DSL impresses me.

hey

where there is a will there is a way

[Bucky Ball]

Puppy Linux and Bodhi are also possiblilies. The eternally spinning disk seems like problematic hardware, though.

PS: If it is a dead optical drive, install from USB. You can use something like UNetbootin to create the install media.

[coldraven]

I copied ubuntu 12.04 onto a usb and tried to boot, no joy. So I copied it to a dvd, no joy

You cannot just copy the .iso you have to make the media bootable.
For a CD or DVD you must use the "Burn Image" setting of the disc burning software.
For a bootable USB stick or SD card* use Unetbootin, Get it here: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

Oh! I forgot to say Welcome

*I use a 1GB SD card for all my installs, it works every time.

[Joel_]

Thanks for all the advice. I am currently writing the lubuntu iso on a thumb drive and trying that. I would assume that the optical drive is working as it booted gparted and the drive tool. I have been running the md5sum on all of the iso's except for the lubuntu one. Im sure i was just being lazy but I did not see the hash listed on the lubuntu.net site. I will revisit that idea if this does not work.
I have tried puppy on a cd, and could not get that to load either. I am burning the image correctly, just as found on the ubuntu web site.
Thanks for telling me about unetbootin, im using that now for my thumb drive.

I'll let you know shortly how it works.

[Joel_]

I finally got something to work! Puppy is running off of a usb currently. I still might see if it is possible to install one of the ubuntu copies that I have to the hard drive through puppy. not sure if this is possible, but I will do some research.

Thanks to all who helped me with this!

[Bashing-om]

Joel_; Great;

Making progress -> sounds like this may be a lack of installed ram. Might see if you can install more, then see if Lubuntu will load up.

just my thought