Anybody tried this?

I have a spare battered old Easyone silver laptop, half the keys dont work due to the mainboard being knackered apparently. I can run it ok with a usb keyboard though. As an experiment and to further my knowledge I have decided to offer it up as a sacrificial lamb and try installing another OS on it.

I have downloaded and burned to cd the 700mb ubuntu installer. I have binned all the junk on the HD and defragged it and then set startup from CD-ROM in the bios. It still starts up in windows though even though the CD rom is in the drive. I know the drive is already partitioned so it can be revovered via 3.5 floppy and I know I will have to add more partitions / swap file etc as part of the ubuntu install. Does anybody have any idea why I cannot get it to boot from cd at the moment?

So much for being experimental and falling at the first hurdle:ugh:

Cheers

There is a small utility (available from the Ubuntu site IIRC) which will take care of that at bootup if your computer won't play.

Gives you the choice to select within 5secs. then defaults to windoze.

Thanks for that. Seems I shall have to research this a little more.

Is your BIOS one where you give boot media different priorities so that the medium with higher priority gets to have a go first? If so, first of all make sure your CD-ROM has higher priority than your HDD.

The other common mistake would be to burn the ISO disc image which you have downloaded as a data file, not as a raw image. This gives you just a regular data CD as opposed to a bootable CD which is what you need.

I am not at all familiar with Windows so I can't help you there, but try and get someone to explain to you how to burn a raw ISO9660 image directly onto disc using whichever software you use for burning CDs in Windows.

Aha...I think thats it!

I just copied and pasted the file into the cdrom drive so its just a data file.

Thanks:ok:

Again, if you visit the Ubuntu site, they provide a link to a suitable bit of software (free) to burn the ISO image.

Can't for the life of me remember what it's called.

Cheers Frostbite, I think I have found it. Shall give it a whirl in the morning.

"ImgBurn" is one of many freewares which will do that.

Still falling at later hurdles:ugh:

Have burned the iso image- it works...to an extent...

The laptop keeps hanging up part way through the installation though.The furthest I have got is to the re-partion hard drive bit but then it goes to pot - because my old laptop already has a partition what it presents me is different to what the setup ubuntu dual booting lesson shows me. I am out of my depth.

This is what I am looking at..
Dual-Booting Windows XP/Vista And Ubuntu 7.04 | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials (http://www.howtoforge.com/dual_boot_windows_xp_vista_ubuntu_feisty)

strangely...I can get as far as the set keyboard layout section and, as I have said, many of my keys on the laptop do not work. Many more seem to work on the ubuntu setup keyboard layout test screen.????

Ubuntu will try to partition and format the hard drive to Ext2 or Ext3 (unless you opt for something more esoteric). If you let it have its head, it will also zap your Windows partition and eat that, too.

Try telling it to set up two partitions, one for everything except the swapfile, one for the swapfile. Make them in the "available" free space.

If you're used to using FDISK, you should find that on the Ubuntu CD - you can then set up your partitions and format them with that.

If it works out right, you should be able also to set up Grub to boot either Windows or Ubuntu at startup.

Ubuntu should also find the USB keyboard and use that - and your mouse, if you have one.

If you can run your windows ok, you can run your linux on an external HDD. This proceedure is far simpler and required a lot less faffing about with CDs and other things.

First you need to buy a external HDD, (or you can use your internal HDD.)

If you buy a hard drive over 100 GB you may want to partition it. partition tools are available on the ultimate software list. Partion the harddrive so that you have 80GB at the most on the place where you are going to place Ubuntu.

If you ar going to use you internal hard drive you may also want to partition it as you will only need around 50 GB.

Once you have brought your hard drive, you are gong to need to Google, 'Wubi'.

This program, is extremely simple to use and is reliable.

It will ask you where you want to place Ubuntu and you place it in the 80 GB partition :ok:

Then once this has been done you are going to need to place the BIOS boot of the external HDD not first, but maybe 2nd or third.

If you have any other trouble just say so, and ill try my best to help!!

Good luck
Borderingstupid:}