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I did say I'd keep you apprised of the developments in switching Charlotte's PC from Windows to Ubuntu, so here's the first update.
Bridget offered to take Charlotte to her dance lesson on Saturday morning, even though it was my turn. So it seemed like the perfect time to sit down and have a crack at it.
I had already downloaded the Live CD ISO and burned it to a CD. The Ubuntu website promised me that the CD would do all the work of cataloguing files and settings and so on, and the whole thing would only take 25 minutes.
Except that the computer wouldn't boot from the CD. Even when I set up the boot order in BIOS to ignore everything but the CD drive, no soap. It would display a line on the screen that said something like ISOBOOT blahblah Debian blahblah and a blinking cursor, then reboot automatically after about 30 second of going nowhere.
If I booted into Windows, the CD would spin up and launch a browser with links to install software, but not to install Ubuntu itself.
So I went to the Ubuntu site and read their page about troubleshooting the Live CD, which suggested that I should try the "alternate install CD". That download took about 20 minutes, so I went and washed some dishes while it ran. Using my own PC, I burned that CD and started all over again.
Still nada. Okay, I thought, this is one of those cases where the CD drive in the old computer won't read CDs burned in my computer. That's not unusual. So I copied the ISO image from my computer to the old computer. Ready to burn to another CD...except the Windows built-in CD burning software doesn't extract ISO images, and there was no other CD-burning tool installed on the machine. Time to go look for a free CD burning tool that isn't loaded down with all sorts of spyware and crap. Not as easy to find as you might think, but eventually I did.
While that software was downloading, I took a pile of laundry upstairs and put it away. By the time I got back, the download was done. Another few minutes spent extracting/installing the software and burning the CD, change the boot order again and......nothing. Not even the ISOLINUX blahblah thing.
At this point, I decided to try another tack -- if the CDs weren't going to boot, maybe I should try burning the installer to a DVD. Except I was all out of blank DVDs. I had to go to CVS anyway to pick up some prescriptions, so off I went. Once there, I could not remember which type of DVD format my DVD burner uses, DVD+R or DVD-R, so I bought a package of each.
(Oh, at this point it's about noon. I had started at 9:30.)
Get home, re-burn the Live CD to a DVD, take it downstairs, restart the old PC...bupkis.
Unlike Georgie-Boy, I know when I need to cut my losses, so I gave up. Three hours into a 25-minute install with absolutely no progress. On the upside, I did get all my Saturday morning errands accomplished, so it wasn't a total waste of time.
Next step: tonight I'll see if there's a BIOS update for the old PC that addresses the "won't boot from CD" option. If that fails, then Plan C will be to build the Live CD on a USB memory stick and try that method. Plan D involves drop-kicking the PC and buying the Mini Mac after all. Stay Tuned.
Hi Brian,
Carol P. asked me to have a look at your problems here. I had a couple of ideas:
1) I know it may be a stupid question, but are you sure that the ISOs are being burnt correctly? You should see a bunch of different files and directories, including an isolinux\ directory, on the CD when it's burnt; if you see the one ISO file, then your software is copying it to disk rather than writing the ISO as an image. Just worth checking; I don't think this is your problem, however.
2) Have you tried downloading any other CD images, such as the System Rescue CD (http://www.sysresccd.org), burning them and see if they work?
3) Can you boot up off another CD, such as a Windows install CD, correctly? Just checking that the drive can detect boot sectors correctly...
HTH,
Paul
Posted by Paul Wayper [URL] at 05/ 7/07
1. Yes, the ISO file was extracted correctly. I also know that the CD works because it will boot my other PC.
2. Also works.
3. Yes.
I also verified that I have the last-released BIOS for this particular PC. Tonight I am going to try booting from a USB flash memory stick. Stay tuned.
Posted by Brian [URL] at 05/ 8/07
Hi Brian,
I hope the USB stick boot works for you. They can be tricky to format correctly, from what I've heard.
Five other options I can think of:
1) Try another distro - I've always had good luck with Fedora Core, but http://www.makethemove.net has a few other recommendations.
2) If this doesn't work directly, Fedora Core also has a 'network install' option where you burn a very small image to disk (I use rewritables for this) and then accesses the entire ISO from HTTP, NFS or FTP server either locally or on the internet (the latter, of course, being much slower). That might boot. The page http://www.samspublishing.com/articles/article.asp?p=169466&seqNum=2&rl=1 also mentions booting into the install from a floppy disk.
3) I think Ubuntu has a 'Live CD' option which also allows you to run a program in Windows that can then launch the Ubuntu install process.
4) Try taking the hard drive out of the Dell, putting it into a machine that can boot it, and installing Linux on that. Then put the hard drive back into the Dell and Kudzu/Anaconda should do the rest.
5) If you're really keen, try setting up a network boot option to boot the machine directly off a bootp/tftp server on your home network.
HTH,
Paul
Posted by Paul Wayper [URL] at 05/ 9/07
Thanks again, Paul.
I had thought of the network option myself, since I know the CD runs on my own PC, but a netboot option does not aappear to be available on the old PC.
I might try an earlier release of Ubuntu, but I don't think I want to put a different Linux distro on this computer. It's for my 6-year-old daughter and needs to be easy-to-use/easy-to-maintain.
The Ubuntu Live CD itself does not install inside Windows, but I just read about a package called Wubi that IS a Windows Installer for Ubuntu. It also gives you a dual boot option, which might avoid some of the emulator issues I am anticipating.
As you can see, I have come nowhere close to exhausting my options yet.
Posted by Brian [URL] at 05/ 9/07
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