Linux Live CD works until HD install Now nothing works!! ??

gosport1 · 10-05-2006, 11:50 AM

The Live CD worked great. The HD install worked great once after install and reboot. I shut off the computer then turned it back on, nothing else! Now UBUNTU hangs after “uncompressing Linux… Ok, booting the kernel” Neither the Live CD or the HD install of UBUNTU work at all if I turn on the computer and boot to them directly.

The only way to get the Live CD to work is to boot to Windows, insert the Live CD, then select restart from the Windows shutdown menu.

The HD install of UBUNTU works if I first boot to Windows then select restart from the Windows shutdown menu and let it boot to UBUNTU, but the graphics are so messed up that I can barely see what I am doing!

I tried starting from scratch and deleting everything and installing just UBUNTU but nothing worked not even the Live CD. It just hung up after “uncompressing Linux… Ok, booting the kernel”.

What is going on????

Sony VAIO Notebook, 750 MHz Pentium III, 382 MB RAM, File System: 32 Bit, Kernel 2.6.15-27-386, UBUNTU on one partition and Windows ME on the other partition.

Thanks in advance,
Michael

BrianK · 10-05-2006, 04:34 PM

When you boot into the CD distro, mount your drive manually, (sudo mount /dev/hda1 /some/directory), then check out /boot/grub/menu.lst. In there, twoards the bottom, there should be a line that says something like "Ubuntu kernel 2.6.yada.yada" and has some other info grouped with it like "root (hd0,1)" and so forth. Can you copy/paste that stuff here?

Also, what is your drive setup? Do you have one hard drive or more than one? What is the partition layout? (i.e. windows on partition 1, /boot on partition 2, / on partition 3, swap space on partition 4 etc.) Do you have any external drievs hooked up? Were there external drives hooked up during your Ubuntu install?

I've had issues with Ubuntu not installing grub properly when it gets confused about drives. I suspect this is related.

gosport1 · 10-05-2006, 07:02 PM

How do I "boot into the CD distro" and "mount your drive manually" and what does this mean? Sorry but I am very new to this... but committed.

I had Windows ME on this machine and let UBUNTU partition the drive. However I have since tried XUBUNTO and let that further partition the drive so I have know idea where I am now unless someone tells me how to tell. Originally I let UBUNTU wipe the HD completely for a fresh install but didn't partition until I found I was having problems.

Thanks for you input,
Michael