That's correct. The point I was making was in regard to the image you posted, post 26. In the image showing what you entered in the terminal you were not using sudo and you left out "/mnt" after --rooot-directory.

Generally on reboot, the CD tray will open and you remove the CD. If it opens again for whatever reason, ignore it. Putting the CD in and running the sudo update-grub command is pointless and the error message is telling you that you are trying to update grub on the CD. The CD is an iso9660 filesystem which means it is read-only. If you can boot to the installed system on the harddrive, run: sudo update-grub. There is not point in running it from the CD.

Now that's confusing. Why are you trying to reinstall Grub if you don't have anything installed. Maybe I missed something in the numerous posts above but the commands you are referring to are for "re-installing" Grub. Have you read the information at the Ubuntu site below on Grub2?

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Installing

i use fedora on my old computer work find and can get 32 bit

[QUOTE=rokytnji;5531359]Hey rokytnji. Yes, I appreciate your honesty. Just to be absolutely clear though, I was kidding about your motorcyles and the "labor" and all. Sorry if I offended. :( If I did, I assure you it was completely unintentional.

Thanks JenkinsCW. Yeah, it's starting to look like the hard drive is the culprit. I'm still trying a few last ditch things though to see if it's salvage-able. Thanks for the command. I'll use that if I bail on salvaging the hard drive.

I've got other computers I can use so don't need the PI 3 but thanks for suggesting it.

[QUOTE=Gregg Bell;5529622]
"Recently I inherited a (crashed) Dell Optiplex GX520, which is only a year newer but it is 64 bit. Here are the specs:
...
And in terms of installing a linux distro, the computer does not seem to accept a USB flash drive for installation purposes and the CD tray does not eject."

My second computer happens to be an Optiplex GX520, 12 years old. After trying Lubuntu that never worked well and Mint, which demanded too much resources, I installed elementary OS (from a USB stick, it is available in the BIOS here). It is an excellent alternative - the computer is like new.

I ran the command in the terminal. It didn't return anything. Hmm.

Hi Gregg...

How about this command...

I'm not sure if it will give the needed details but I thought it might be worth a try. :)

Regards...

Thanks yancek. Well... I got the grub installer because when I booted up (without the disc) it led to the 946 screenshot. Then I powered down. Then I put the live disk back in and booted up. It led to the live Bodhi and then I tried installing Bodhi again. This time it installed. Got the Disk Utility and turns out everybody was right--it's a bad hard drive (133 bad sectors).

So do I absolutely need a new hard drive?

Hi Gregg...

With 133 bad sectors (which I'm sure was the reason why you were unable to repair Windows 7,) I would highly recommend it. ;)

Regards...

Thanks ardvark. It returned something. I don't really know what it means though. see screenshot

And I couldn't even get an email sent from Bodhi. Could that bad drive be affecting that too?

And so I ran Disks on the computer I'm using now and all it said is "Smart is not enabled." see the other screenshot. What does that mean?

[QUOTE=HT-Borås;5531746]Thanks HT. Elementary looks cool. The GX520 is looking pretty hopeless but I will definitely try Elementary on a different computer.

Unfortunately, the information doesn't show what JenkinsCW was referring to. :(

If the OS was installed on the hard drive, quite possibly. If running live, I doubt it.

You will need to enable S.M.A.R.T. to get the needed information concerning the hard drive. Please see the threads below for information on how to enable it...

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Smartmontools

http://askubuntu.com/questions/20757...o-enable-smart

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/S.M.A.R.T.

Regards...

OMG! That's what I love about Linux! Every thing you do in it you have to learn FIVE TONS OF INFORMATION! LOL ('Just read these three threads THAT WILL TAKE YOU TEN YEARS TO READ AND YOU WILL NOT UNDERSTAND 90% OF THEM!') Ah, I'm just joking with you, ardvark. I appreciate your help. It is kind of funny though. The other way was just open the Disks utility and it tells you and this way seems quite complicated. (This is SMART?)

Anyway, I'm thinking about opening up the GX520 and switching out the hard drive with another one of my computer's hard drives. I read about this $9 brand new hard drive on Newegg but it overheated (and burned the guy operating the computer to death). Okay, okay, I made that up about the guy dying, but it did overheat terribly (according to the review--and remarkably it was a 5* review! The guy was like 'I just bought a better fan...').

Hope you're enjoying the weekend. Nice here in Illinois.

You're very welcome. I'm glad to be of help, even if it's what you don't want to hear! :D :p

Actually, it's not just Linux. When I first started working on computers, it took 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for about 3 months, (at a volunteer job I had) to get a good basic understanding of hardware and how to install an OS. Of course, there was a lot more to learn. ;)

You can do that, that's one way of solving it. :thumbsup:

I'd be curious to know what the normal price was. Something's wrong with a drive that gets that hot. This might be a case of the old adage proving true: "You get what you pay for." :(

Thank you, we're having partly cloudy weather here. Spring in western Oregon is normally quite rainy. :)

Regards...

No pain no gain. :)

Good to hear. When I first was asking about Linux (in a different forum) a couple of people told me I wouldn't be able to learn it. I'm glad I didn't listen to them. When I first got it I was baffled by not having all the buttons. I remember dealing with: 'What is this 'mount' stuff when it comes to flash drives.' Now I know a lot but it's still so little.

I could buy the cheapie but this way I'll learn a lot more.

I'm sure you're right. Plus they don't tell you the brand. Here's a link for a different cheap one. Have you ever heard of this website? Think it's reliable? https://www.discountelectronics.com/...rd-drive-80gb/ [/QUOTE]

Ha ha. I was out that way a couple of years ago. Visited Portland. But my fav was Cape Disappointment (just north of Portland in Washington). What a great name! And the waves! Breathtaking. I really liked it out there. Cool people. Not snooty at all. (And drivers stop at crosswalks! (I almost killed someone when I first got there! We don't do that in Illinois.) Courtesy--what a concept! But yeah, the rain. But when it was nice, it was PERFECT!