sgosnell, thanks for the link. I have spent enough time perusing it to see that there are several days, if not weeks of reading about a subject that I am not really interested in. I just want to get back to work, and Windows 10 is beginning to look more attractive all the time. I don't mean to be dismissive in any way, it's just that it is waaay to deep for me to try to master just to install linux. Much more efficient to replace this SSD with another that doesn't have the issues that this one seems to have.

yancek, I would like to put together a complete picture to assist you. I will stop with the attempts to reinstall so as to have a static view. Please give me a list of all the things that you would like to see that will tie everything together and I will do all that I can from a Live CD, or if better (please advise), I can boot up the Ubuntu 12.04 and gather info from there.

Thanks to both

My suggestion would be to ignore the partitioning, and let the installer do it. Let it use the entire disk. That's the easy way, and the best choice unless you really know what you're doing and have good reasons for changing things. Ubuntu used to do that OK, but I abandoned it long ago. Debian will certainly handle it easily enough, whether the computer uses UEFI or legacy grub. It just works. I prefer the netinstall version, a small download, and it installs whatever packages and desktop environment you choose. I keep a copy on an old 500MB flash drive not useful for much else. Just in case...

You have my full attention now. I know too little about linux of any kind to be able to do much of anything by myself and therefore must rely on the great support of those of you who are capable, but I persevere because I value the Gnome 2 style desktop very highly and once installed I find Ubuntu rock steady. So does Debian offer top and bottom taskbar (ability to put shortcuts on top one), ability to put files and folders on desktop, and most importantly, multiple workspaces on bottom taskbar?

If not, I will continue with U Mate (Gnome 2 is that important to me), and maybe what I need to do is just to pull the existing SSD (which has my working Ubuntu 12.04 on it and still available to me if I cannot get U Mate installed), replace it with a new one and use the entire thing as you suggest.

I look forward to your advice on Debian/Gnome 2. Thanks

I had similar issue to yours running a 2 varieties of SSD's. Using a variety of boot installers and managers. I never did get it going.
Later on I discovered the Powersupply was insufficient for the board and accessories as well as the board being generally not much chop for USB anyway.
One of the issues was once the power voltage dropped on the the motherboard USB busses, the USB standard will drop from 480Mbps to 12Mbps...
Another issue was I was not typing GB into the partition size box. The default or blank is MB
I havnt bothered to revist those earlier set-ups
I now let the installer chop the drive up,,,

XFCE will handle all you want to do. This dude likes his pretty cluttered like Windows. The below screen shot is Mepis MX-15 based on Debian Jessie. Ubuntu and Mint has XFCE versions also if that is what you prefer to use.

http://i.imgur.com/IcmdEzc.jpg

Odyssey1942,

So do I and that's why I use Linux Mint 17.3 MATE, which will do all those things you require (effortlessly).

These most welcome posts give me much optimism, thanks all.

Given that I have used Ubuntu 12.04 very successfully for two years and I believe it is more resource intensive than U Mate 14.04, I would have thought the computer would handle it, but what do I know.

I did go into the BIOS for a look around and noticed that the date of the BIOS (American Megatrends) on the computer is 1985-2005 so the mobo may be much older that I would have imagined and this may well be part or all of the problem. OTOH that date may be misleading since I have already been running Ubuntu 12.04 and had a very responsive install of Ubuntu Mate 14.04 for a day.

Maybe what I need to do is to buy and try a new SSD and see if that is the problem. Aside from digging the box out of it's location, changing the SSD is easier than replacing the mobo and cpu and I can disconnect the HDD in case it has indeed failed and is contributing to the problem.

If anyone has any other ideas before I shut it down, please let me know. I have to leave in about an hour and will be gone until late afternoon, but will try to buy a new SSD while I am out and will check for replies when I return.

One final question before I depart, since it is a BIOS machine, is the sda1 gpt something that I should try to keep? If I do go with a new SSD, do I need to plan to set it up, and if so, how does one go about it? Thanks

You can run any desktop environment (Mate, Xfce, Gnome, Cinnamon, KDE, etc) on any distro. All you have to do is install it. The Debian net installer gives you a choice at installation time, and you can choose one or any number of them. Xfce or Mate is probably the DE you're looking for, and you can arrange the panels as you like - top, bottom, left, right, or any mix of that, and put whatever you like in any panel.

GPT isn't necessary, but if you do decide to remove it, follow the instructions on the fdisk instructions I linked above. Having both installed creates problems.

sgosnell, thanks for your patience with this inept, unwilling student. I have read a bit of the very well written tutorial, but my eyes are beginning to glaze over. Honestly, I have now spent about two weeks trying to do something that had I known I would be spending two weeks on (on and off for sure, but still....), I would have just said, "not a chance" and gone back to Windows. I am not hard core linux, I am just a busy person who uses the hell out of his computer, I like linux when I can get it to work and I just want to get back to my other (non-linux) life.

Here is what I know:
This is an older BIOS computer (and maybe it is time for an upgrade)
I have a SSD with a gpt partition at the beginning (AFAIK, it has never had Windows installed on it). I am pretty sure that the SSD drive came with that gpt already installed
The next partition (sda2) has a working (for two years now) install of Ubuntu Fall-back 12.04 (which is still there and works)
From that point (sda3) on, nothing works.

So I am ready to just install over the whole mess, "start over" so to speak. But sgosnell's caution about removing it first (I haven't reached that point in the tutorial yet) gives me pause.

The question is, (for anyone) should I

1) remove the SSD and replace it with a new one (not knowing if it will also have a gpt partition, which i expect it will). If no gpt, do the whole disk install (i.e., not something else) and let it get on with it

2) do the same with the existing SSD WITHOUT removing sda1 (I know sgosnell advised against it, but I have to get all this stuff behind me)

3) remove the SSD and replace with a HDD and use the whole disk install.

I am not making any progress at all with my inability to reinstall U Mate 14.04 and not getting much help on that, so at some point I just have to turn to alternatives. I apologize for throwing this into the laps of you good people and asking for your guidance, but I am at my wit's end.

Thanks for your continuing patience.

Edit: Do I need gpt or will I benefit from it? Can't I get along nicely with BIOS without gpt? I have now skimmed the entire article that sgosnell linked, but I do not see anything about removing gpt.

Read the fixparts page. You run fixparts to remove the gpt partition remnants, then use gparted to make one partition table and partition that takes the whole disk, then run the installer which will repartition it as necessary. I wouldn't bother with a new SSD, the current one will work fine. You can leave the gpt partition table if you like. All you really need to do is install the distro of your choice, and let the installer take care of partitioning.

Is the fixparts page on the link that you posted? I didn't see it and the search tool doesn't find it.

Edit: found it. Google is my friend

More: So still use fixparts?

Still reading, but it is out of my pay grade.

rokytnji and beachboy2. Will it do what I want without my having to deal with the gpt issue?

Again, you do not have to remove the gpt table. Removing gpt and partitioning a disk are different tasks, and done by different tools. One more time, if you don't want to deal with gpt, just ignore it, and use gparted to remove the partitions, put one partition to fill the entire disk, run the installer, and let it deal with the partitioning for the OS.

On my used ssd drives bought from ebay. I just use gparted to create a new partition table on the drive and pick msdos instead of gpt.

http://gparted.org/screens/gparted_8_big.png

So far that has worked for me on Used pulled Mac laptop ssd drives sold on ebay set up as gpt.

Then I can carve it up with 3 primary and the rest is extended/logical partitions.
I did the IBM Z60M this way with data1 and data2 partitions so /home would not get filled up.
I used fstab, uuid, and symlinking folders from data partition to /home to keep /home intact in case of a reinstall being needed.

Edit: Or roll the way with gpt like sgosnell says. That works also.

Odyssey1942,

Either of these ways will work.

I wouldn't bother with creating new partitions or switching away from GPT at all. Just remove all the partitions that don't contain parts of the old Ubuntu installation, then start the system from the install disc. The installer should offer you an option to automatically create all needed partitions in the free space, just go for that.