Hi I am a complete newbie, I have a hp pavilions laptop running windows 8 (pre installed) this is a replacement for a faulty one and is only 8months old but now out of warranty so cant take it back. It is crap, sorry but windows 8 is just not a nice os and now I have blue screen of death every 5 minutes. I decided to try linux and have the discs but I'm not sure how to go about installing them, I dont care about windows 8 staying on the laptop, I now have a chrome book so have access to all my documents which were saved on google drive anyway, I don't care if I wipe windows off, I just don't know how to install the linux discs. Any help would be good.
Regards
Debbi

Which Linux disks do you have? If you have something like Ubuntu or Linux Mint, inserting the disk into the drive and rebooting should get you to the "desktop," which will have an icon that says "Install Ubuntu (or Linux Mint."

This or course assumes that the disks were burned properly. Or do you have a disk that you purchased somewhere?

1 members found this post helpful.

You should be able to put the disk in the drive and just boot the computer off of it. You may have to specify the computer to boot off the disk. Usually when you are booting up you will see some messages on the screen about what keys to press to boot into the bios or boot order. For example on my laptop I need to press f10 to get into the boot menu where I can choose to boot from cd/dvd or usb drive etc

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for the quick responses, I bought the discs and have 5 including ubuntu so I will go ahead and try the suggestions.
Regards
Debbi

Most distributions will guide you through installation when you boot off of the CD or DVD. So, you need to get your computer to boot off of the media which contains the Linux distribution. When that loads it will allow you to just use Linux as booted from the external media; or give you the option to install.

I hope you're able to get those systems to boot off of the external media. I have a totally different system which I wished to install Linux onto it, but no matter what I try, I cannot get it to boot from an external drive. That's my problem, not your's, but I am hoping that this particular gotcha is not something you'll be facing. In preparation, look up what you need to do to get those pavillions booting off of an external drive.

For more detailed help. List the distribution you're trying to install and those who have experience with that particular distribution can give the more detailed help.

And if you're able to get it to "look" at the external drive but it then won't boot. You may want to describe how you obtained these Linux disks, if you burned them yourself and how you got to that point. Most situations you'll have an ISO file when you burn that to a CD or DVD it will make it a boot-able disk for your system.

This link might be helpfull

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...name=c00364979

|Hi I'm back again, it wont boot from the disc, I cant get the boot menu from f9 I have to go into the settings menu and every time I try to boot from disc it gives an error message. I have managed to disable the secure boot function but still no luck. Any other suggestions?
regards
Debbi

You bought CDs containing Ubuntu and there were 5 disks that came? Or you got 5 CDs, containing some Linux distributions; one of which is Ubuntu? Any chance you have a link about where you bought these disks from? Just want to know if you got a bunch of zipped files, or boot-ready CDs.

You should also be able to look at the contents of these CDs on a working computer, and further, a different working computer should be able to boot off of these CDs similarly not installing but giving you the option to run off CD or install. I'm suspecting that the disks aren't boot-able.

i put fedora on my dads hp pavillion (no cd-rom so i had to use usb)... there were a few f-keys that had to be pressed in order to get it to boot (from memory, i think it was f2 to get to the list of bootable devices and f10 to get to the bios and f9 went to some hp diagnostics thingy (each computer is different)).

after disabling secure-boot from the bios and setting the external drive as the first boot device. i was able to install fedora however the window-8 partition refuses to boot (something about bcd) lucky for you since you no longer like windows-8 but seems like a waste since half the cost of the laptop is the windows license.

This might be helpfull

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...name=c03659945


My laptop (Lenovo) came with Win 8 and I remember I had to jump through a few hoops to get it to boot off a USB stick

I think the latest Ubuntu which is 13.10 has support for the UEFI and I am not sure but I think that even support the secure boot. So Debbi make sure you are using the latest version of Ubuntu. You can download it from this link http://www.ubuntu.com/download

Try to make a bootable USB, that seemed to help, in an experience I had during and install fest with my local LUG

If you manage to install a different OS but your computer still gives you screens of death I would suspect is some kind of hardware problem.

Wish you best luck

Don't have Win8, so not sure if this will help. Win8 has a "Fast Startup" feature that basically just hibernates the kernel rather than really shutting down the computer. Maybe that is causing the problem.

Just do a search on how to do a full shutdown of Win8 and disable "Fast Startup" feature. Do both: disable "Fast Startup" and do full shutdown. Then try booting your Linux DVD's again.

I think the fast start up was the problem I had when I first tried installing Linux on my laptop that came with Win 8. I could not get it into the bios or boot menu until that was disable, it would always just boot back to windows

Try hold in F8 key it gives you a bunch of options.
Id go for a repair of the windows partition and then install linux.

Hi sorry I've not replied for a while but have been working and stuff, I'm still trying all the suggestions and will be back as soon as I have either succeeded or exhausted all of them.I did buy the discs from linux store so expected them to work.
Regard Debbi