trying to reformat
 

My computer keeps getting slower, especially online. I want to reformat it, but I can't find the install option on the disk. I keep going through folders, but I find mostly text files.

why would you find an option in a folder? I don't understand that at all. Reinstalling your system rather than looking at why it's being slow is a bit of a rash thing to do, but if that's what you want, then the installer (ubuntu I presume??) will do this as part of the process.

Please tell us the specs on the computer. For example, you might just be running out of memory (RAM).

You cannot "re-format" a running system. If you cannot fix your issues any other way, then re-installing is certainly an option. For that, you do the same as you did on the first install----typically, that means boot from the install CD.

I am not sure of the specs on the computer, but it has gotten to the point of being so slow that videos freeze, the screen goes gray, something as simple as a dropdown menu won't open, etc. I have not been able to get the DVD to initiate the reinstall process which is why I have been looking for it in a folder. It is a version of Ubuntu. I am not sure which version I have installed, but the disk (I have several) that I think is the one that this version came on is 5.04. I don't really do well with computers so trying to fix the problem is difficult. I can use it well enough to use the programs I want to use, but I can't really figure out how to troubleshoot.

First, let's figure out what hardware you have. Open a terminal and enter "free" (no quotes)---post the results here.

Next, enter "grep model /proc/cpuinfo" Post that also.


If you truly have Ubuntu 5.04, then it's time for a complete reinstall. (5.04 means April of 2005 which--in Linuxtime--is practically forwever.)

will@will-ME051:~$
will@will-ME051:~$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1017420 991444 25976 0 14436 246572
-/+ buffers/cache: 730436 286984
Swap: 1648636 493980 1154656
will@will-ME051:~$ grep model /proc/cpuinfo
model : 13
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.80GHz
will@will-ME051:~$

Something I forgot to mention earlier is that there is a window that occasionally pops up to install something. I keep selecting cancel, but it eventually comes back.
I didn't think it had been quite that long it had been since I bought any new magazines (with the DVDs). I am going to have to get another one.

OK, abandon everything, download Ubuntu 12.04, burn the CD, and boot to it. if you've dregs of 5.04 in there, why bother? a 1.8ghz system should handle the newest ubuntu fine.

I've still not a clue what you mean by looking in folders for reformatting.. that's nonsense.

I just went to a book store & looked through the magazines. I am somewhat annoyed that none of them have the list of what software comes with the distro like at least one of them used to have. I now have 12.04 which I will install tonight. As for the looking through folders, as the disk would not initiate the installation, I went looking through the various folders on the disk trying to find some way to get it to work. That will no longer be an issue as I am now moving on to 12.04.
I do have another question though. I set up a folder on an external drive to move everything over, and just dumped thousands of files into it. I already had the vast majority of them backed up, but need to do some reorganizing anyway. Apparently, there are some files that have the same names, obviously in different folders. As I tried to simply copy everything over including the folders as one large copy operation, I kept getting notified of files waiting to copy having the same name already in the folder. Is there some known glitch that would cause that? Why would a file name used in different folders have an issue if the folders are being copied over exactly the same?

That would be quite a list as most commonly used distributions come with 2,000+ programs. The reason you couldn't find the installer on your earlier installed system is because the installer is usually not installed as it would be pointless to install an installer on an installed system, although it can be done. Is that clear?

You will probably need to give more information on your copying problem, some specific examples of files. Also, are you referring to system files or files you created and what method are you using to copy?

Something is filling up most of your RAM-and it's using significant swap space--that will probably slow things down. But--install an up to date OS and then start from there.

If your MB will support it, adding some more memory would not hurt---my system (Arch) is right now using 2.5G of RAM (and no swap)I'm not running much of anything.

When I started to install 12.04, I found out that the version I had been using was actually 10.10, not 5.04. I didn't think it had been THAT long since my last update. I also figured out what happened with the duplicate file names & the overwrite option. The OS was case sensitive for storing files, so "irony.jpg" & "Irony.jpg" could exist in the same folder, but the copy operation was not case sensitive, and got tripped up by the similar names. Thanks for all the input!