That is to say:

1. You have burned a 8.10 32-bit live cd, have put it in you CD drive, booted and your system boots to the installed OS.

2. If so the boot sequence probably is for your HDD before your CDROM.

3. At startup look for the possibility of a one time boot, or hit the key for entering the BIOS setup. Read the directions for movement in and changing of the settings carefully, and proceed at your own risk. On one of the pages after the first page you will see lines something like "first boot device", "second boot device", etc. Change the settings so that CDROM is the first device and the HDD where your OS is installed is the second. Save and exit.

4. Your 8.10 should boot, and you should see as one of the choices on the boot menu a "media check" to test the quality of the burned cd.

5. Good Luck, and there are tutorials for "change BIOS boot order" if my explanation is unclear.

I wanted to convey the fact that I had checked the BIOS and indeed the first boot device is the CD/DVD drive. So, that is why it seemed strange to me that it wasn't booting from the cd.

Maybe it is the DVD/CD drive that is bad. I mean, it isn't seeing this disk as a bootable dvd/cd. On my main system, it has no problem seeing the disk and what is on it. On the systerm where I installed Ubuntu 8.04, I get errors messages saying that it cannot mount the drive. Maybe I should try a music cd to see if it recognizes that.
Bruce

no linux distro will fix an intermittant hardware problem and the OP had problems with xp

bwhealton:

After all I'm reading, I begin to suspect that the CD/DVD drive's damaged, too (I don't know about the HD yet - fsck might tell you more); especially since the disc you burned seems to work on another machine. If you've got a spare, swap it - or simply get a new one to put in, they're not that expensive, and if the machine dies, you can still reuse it.

lakedude:

The point is that DVDs can contain other types of information and have a different physical layout - depending on the drive, the (slightly) contradicting information (CD vs. DVD) can prevent a CD image on a DVD from working; but then, if it works, why bother? I think in this case we're looking at a more basic problem, as nyle and lazlow have pointed out.

M.

+1 on a new DVD drive
they wear out I recommend the Memorex brand as I have only gotten one bad and they exchanged it, also they are fast. I have never used other than the fastest possible speed selection and [except the bad drive] never had a failed write until they wear out.

It's always good to read it first.

My mistake, I didn't read the text closely. To be redundent, you did burn this as an ISO image file and if possible have seen that it does boot on another system? I am only being obtuse because otherwise the others are certainly correct and your drive has to be replaced.

Very true...

Second, some PC's just don't run Live CD's for Ubuntu very well, although yours should. If you continue to have a problem with the Ubuntu Live CD, I would use the Ubuntu Alternate Install CD. Its a text based installer, but since you're taking over the entire hard drive with your Ubuntu install, you don't really have anything to fear (some get nervous using the text based partition tool).

http://osmirrors.cerias.purdue.edu/p...releases/8.10/

Note the alternate install CD's, have "alternate" in the filename. Stick w/ i386 of course, and I think this will help your problem.. Provided you do not have any underlying hardware problems.

IGF

Do you think it could be that my CD/DVD player/writer is ok, and that the problem was with the CD image? I'll try that alternate cd.

I think it would be a good idea to replace the CD/DVD Reader/writer too, from the other responses.

I didn't try seeing what would happen if I tried to boot to this disk on my other computer. I'll try that too.

Lastly, on the other issue of running Linux within Windows, as a Windows application or service, I didn't really understand the different options. This thread dealt with using VMWare, and another Companies product. I had thought, though I could be quite wrong, that there was a way to run one of the Linux distros as a Windows App/Service, right out of the box, as they say. However, if Ubuntu doesn't offer that then I wouldn't want to try a different distro. I want to install it on the other computer, my main computer, to help me learn Ubuntu.

So, with different options available, VMWare and one other was suggested, how do I choose? Are they free? Even with VMWare there were a few options. Can someone clear up things for me. I just didn't completely follow everything that was said. It would definitely help to be able to run Linux within Windows so I don't have to reboot.
Thanks,
Bruce

I'm well aware that CDs and DVDs are physically different. The question is if there is something that makes an ISO strictly for use on a CD instead of a DVD.

Before you answer consider this:

Hard drives are also physically different from one another. They vary in speed (RPM), capacity, number of platters, number of sectors/segments/cylinders, etc. They even vary by file system (NTFS, FAT, EXT2, EXT3, Riser, etc.)Yet when saving a file to a hard drive (with a compatible file system) all this is transparent. It matters not at all if I'm saving a file to a 74GB 10,000RPM Raptor, or to a 1TB variable speed, low power, "green" drive(as long as there is room for the file).

lakedude:

Point taken - and I'll admit at any time that I'm no file system expert. But the mechanical (rather: electromechanical) method of producing HD file systems remains the same all over, regardless of the actual file system, whereas - if I'm not totally mistaken - there's a physical difference between methods for CD and DVD (writables, of course). But it may well be that it's not that different - like with HDs. It'd be interesting to see what happens if one puts a (suitably small) DVD image on a CD - I'm almost certain a DVD player wouldn't accept it. If it's only an FS thing - it's just as well, in fact.

Anyhow, I don't think I can argue this any further - I'm only in favour of putting a CD image on a CD in order to eliminate any source of failure in that respect.

M.

Since it appears you have an intermittent hardware problem. I would suggest that if your laptop supports booting to a usb device, downloading Puppy and installing it to a flash drive and seeing if you can boot without problems. If that works without a hitch install puppy to the hard drive ( ruling out cd-rom problem ) and try booting. If this works without problems I would suspect a cd-rom problem, if not, it is possible there is a drive controller problem which is more serious ( odds of loosing hard drive and cd at the same time very slim).

Edit: You can also do a fsck from puppy to check your hard drive.

Some laptops allow you to run diagnostics from the bios enabling you to identify (or rule out) a hard drive issue.

Since you have two pcs, why not put the drive in the working one and than put it back? If it still fails to boot/run, then you have either a motherboard or a hard drive issue. If your iso fails to install at all, then it is definitely the hard drive as you already verified that your main computer can run ubuntu just fine.

I'm no expert either, however I must agree. Perhaps that's why we have separate DVD and CD versions available for download?