hello i just downloaded linuc ubuntu 12.10 and my computer wont start
 

Ok so i just downloaded thelinix ubuntu 12.10 and burned.it to a cd then it was working really good until i shut-off my laptop(hp-2000-us) then when i removed the disk and turned on my computer it showed up with a blank screen and ( _ ) the symbol on the top and when i tried to press any key it made a weird noice and nothing happened right now i pressed f2 key 73% of my system memmory che k is done but nothon

---------- Post added 01-13-13 at 02:03 PM ----------

(Continued...) But nothing happened so what should i do now ???

If nothing else helps, remove the battery, wait a minute, put it back and see if that helps?

With the cd inside your laptop, you load an OS ( Windows or Linux) correctly?

ok so what i did is that i inserted the disk back in and booted then it worked and now it works without the cd and will i be able to access windows7 at all or not ?

I don't know..Depends on what kind of installation you choose.

Did you install Linux on the entire Hard disk or not? Did you delete the windows partition?

I marked the spot in your narrative where you seem to have left out quite a lot of information.

Did you boot Linux in LiveCD mode and use it that way? Doesn't seem to fit the resulting symptoms, but maybe it does fit.

Did you boot the Linux CD and go through the install process, making some mistake that that explains the symptom, and possibly also making some mistake that destroyed your installed copy of Windows?

It is hard to give you help while guessing what you did to need help.

That changes our guesses a bit, but I'm still guessing.
I'm guessing you ran Linux in liveCD mode and didn't install it to your hard drive. I'm guessing you did some kind of suspend, rather than "shut-off" your laptop. Then somehow removed the CD? Then un suspended, so it couldn't do anything without the CD?

Too much guessing! But if you did all that you could really shut down Linux, so the CD auto ejects and the next time you boot up, you're back to Windows.

But if you installed Linux, that would be a completely different set of guessing for details of what you did and what you might do now to fix it.

That whole suspend idea was kind of optimistic guessing. If this were a 50/50 bet, I'm sorry to say I bet you trashed your Windows install. If your laptop wouldn't boot to Linux without the CD, then you didn't install grub to the MBR, so the first part of the Windows boot code is still in the MBR. But if that boot code can't find Windows, then probably you trashed the Windows install by having the Linux install use the whole drive (except the MBR).

ok so my laptop does boot without the cd and i get the option of pressing esc button, unbuntu option popps up i downloaded the unbutu on the hard drive and also burned it on the disk and if i erased the windows can i get it back ?

That doesn't do any more than give you a very large file (700MB) on your hard drive.


Burning Ubuntu to a disk won't have any effect on your hard drive or booting windows. You are leaving out a lot of information. Generall, what happens is you download the iso file, in your case for Ubuntu, you do an md5checksum to verify the download (instructions should be on the Ubuntu site), you then open CD burning software and burn the iso image to a disc, CD or DVD. It must be burned as an image and not just copied. You would then boot your computer with the burned Ubuntu disc in the drive and your computer set to boot first from the CD drive. Is this what you did? If not, what exactly did you do?

It's really difficult to diagnose what happened with the limited information you have provided. I

In your last post, you indicate you can boot Ubuntu. Is that the case? If so, is the problem that you can only boot Ubuntu but not your windows installation?

ok so what i did was when my installation for the linux was done i got a prompt saying i needed to burn it on the cd drive so i did that and when the computer restarted it started the linux and i got to divide the partition for the hard drive and all the stuff then when i restarted the computer i never saw windows right now i am using linux and it says i have ~250GB of hard drive but the tottal amount of hard disk space i should have is `400GB so i think windows is still somewhere here

Try this; open a terminal ie cmd line window and type
that's a lowercase L by the way.
Post the output.

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0001c8d3

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 491205211 245601582 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 491206654 976771071 242782209 5 Extended
Partition 2 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda5 968689664 976771071 4040704 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 491206656 968689663 238741504 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order



---thats the output

Indeed I see no ntfs partitions meaning that there is no Windows in that computer anymore. But if you want to get your Windows back and you have a fancy Dell, then there is probably some method to make a factory reset somehow and it wipes out your Linux and replaces it with Windows, or if you have recovery disk set included then somewhere either in Dell site or with your computer, there should be instructions to make factory recovery.

alright well thanks very much to all of you :)

There are a number of tutorials online on how to install Ubuntu, some of them have graphical images of most steps so you might want to google and look at a few of those before you try again so you know what to expect. Here's a link to Ubuntu. Hope you have a windows installation CD/DVD or else are ready to make the switch:

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/...desktop-latest