Ubuntu 14.04 on Dell Dimension 4600
 

My trusty Dell has been relegated to test usage for the past couple of years. A yesterday I attempted to install Mint Mate 17 which I believe is based on Ubuntu 14.04. The install went fine, it booted one time and after that it will not boot. It goes to the grub 2 screen but never goes further. The keyboard is not responsive. I cannot pick a selection from the grub menu nor will a Ctrl-Alt-Del reboot the machine.

I then did a clean install of Ubuntu 14.04 - 32 bit of course - on a fresh hard drive. Same issue, I cannot get past the grub screen. I have tried reinstalling grub - same issue. I did a second install of Ubuntu 14.04 on the same hard drive. I get two Ubuntu entries on the grub menu but I cannot select between them and the default never boots.

On the odd chance might be the PS/2 style keyboard I installed a USB keyboard. Same issue. I do not get past grub and have no keyboard response.

The machine runs 12.04 just fine. The video card is an nVidia 6200. The machine has 4 GB of RAM which should be sufficient.

Any suggestions? I really have no idea where to go from here. Ubuntu 14.04 and Mint Mate 17 run fine when I boot them from a flash drive.

TIA,

Ken

is it this one?

ubuntu doesn't bother with "old" hardware anymore.

does it have to be ubuntu?

Thanks ondoho,

No, it does not have to be Ubuntu. This is strictly a test PC. I am running 12.04 on a netbook and the wife's desktop and Ubuntu 12.04 server on my Power Edge server. My main desktop is running CentOS 6. The Ubuntu machines are good until 2017 and the CentOS machine until 2020 but I am always looking ahead. Sometimes it is nice to try a distro on a physical box rather than just a VMWare virtual machine.

Ken

What about trying a non-pae system? I believe MX-14 (a blend of antiX and MEPIS, Debian-based) either has or at least offers a non-pae version.

Thanks albinard. Sorry I did not get back to this sooner. Other fish to fry...

The issue does not seem to be the pae kernel. I have been running pae kernels on the box for longer than I can remember. I did some further testing.

Debian 7 (wheezy) pae - installed fine and runs fine.
Lubuntu i386 - installed but would not boot
Fedora 20 Mate i686 pae - installed fine and runs fine.

Starting with a clean drive I then installed:

Mint 17 Mate 32-bit (I think pae) - installed but would not boot
Fedora 20 Mate along side the Mint OS - installed fine and runs fine. AND the Mate OS also boots.

I have observed that Ubuntu 14-4. Lubuntu 14.04 and Mate 17 use GNU GRUB version 2.02~beta2-9 according to the grub menu. Fedora uses grub 2-2.00.25.fc20.i686.

It seems to me that the version of grub used by the 'buntus is the source of the problem. I am trying to figure out how to collect enough data to report a bug. I cannot boot the offending Ubuntu install using its installed grub. I guess I can install Ubuntu then boot from the Fedora live CD and reinstall grub to prove that that works and just report my findings.

Ken

p.s. While I was writing this I had Ubuntu 14.04 installing along side the other two systems. It installed its screwed up version of grub and now nothing boots. I have power cycled and it is coming up on the Fedora Live CD. I will post my results after I try to reinstall grub.

Sorry to be so long in updating this thread. I did not manage to install grub from the Fedora Live disk. I did start over and installed Ubuntu 14.04 and Lubuntu 14.04 side by side. Neither booted. I then installed Debian Wheezy. Now ALL THREE boot just fine. I have filed a bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...2/+bug/1352523

Ken