I have a freshly unboxed Lenovo Ideacentre Q180, it ships with FreeDos so I'm trying to install Linux (XBMCbuntu ideally, but any distro will do for now).

I have used UNetbootin to make a bootable USB pen (I've tried it with isos of various distros, including a 32-bit Win7 iso) but when I boot from USB the machine goes straight from BIOS to hanging with a blinking cursor on an otherwise blank screen, or with occasional flashes of a mouse pointer, depending on the iso used.

I've installed Linux from a USB pen dozens of times with various distros on to various hardware.

The machine I'm using is easily capable of running linux:

- Intel Atom D2700 2.13GHz Processor
- 4GB RAM
- 500GB HDD
- AMD Radeon 6450 Video card
- No optical drive

Looking at the BIOS settings, nothing seems clearly wrong, I've tried various boot order settings, and hitting F12 on boot allows me to choose my USB key specifically. The SATA HDD section only has the options of 'IDE Mode' or 'Disabled', I've tried both settings.

So, what else could I check? Or which approach could I take to get more info about the problem?

Cheers

Confession: I've posted this same question on SuperUser. Sorry if this is unacceptable. You know how it is when your delivery finally arrives and you can't use it!

The problem is that there is currently no good Linux driver for your video card. You can force VESA mode but you won't get any acceleration. This is only my understanding as I do not actually own this hardware myself, sorry.

Does that mean a text only distro should work, such as Arch?

I'll go try it now to see, anyway. (No joy, after picking "USB drive" from the F12 boot menu, the PC boots as if I chose "SATA HDD")

If it was a linux video driver problem, wouldn't the Win7 iso have worked?

As far as I know, Windows needs to be installed from a legally-purchased DVD from Microsoft. (But I may be wrong, I am not a Windows user )

I do know that Intel has discontinued the Atom D2700 due to poor reviews and lack of demand.

Thanks for your quick and informed replies. There seems to be a lot of records online of people using the Ideacentre Q180 as a media pc so I'll contact Lenovo to see if I've got a hardware fault.

I don't anticipate a snappy response.

You can try eliminating the Unetbootin variable. For example Ubuntu has their own installer called usb-creator, Fedora has liveusb-creator, etc. and these tend to be much more reliable than Unetbootin (in my experience).

I tried a different usb creator and a different usb key and the distro loaded in live mode no probs. I'm confident that's the problem solved.

Thanks everyone.

Andrew,

Make sure you are using the rear usb ports, as the front ones are USB 3.0 they wont read the memory sticks in dos correctly

Mark