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Trying to install..

leah20a
leah20a Posts: 1
in Getting Started with Linux

I have two computers, both unusable at the moment as they will not reload windows from their recovery discs. I have no Windows discs so I am stuck there. I foolishly thought I could burn a copy of ubuntu on to cd and it would install over my messed up Windows! When I use the disc I get as far as choosing language and then install before getting the can't read boot CD error. I wanted to check if it is worth trying again with another disc or I am i doing something totally wrong? Thanks for any suggestions.

Comments

  • czar960
    czar960 Posts: 43
    I don't know what version of Lunix you were trying to install but I know that the Ubuntu install disk i used has an option to "check disk for errors" option. You might try that.
    good luck!
  • pagesix1536
    pagesix1536 Posts: 5
    Almost sounds like you have a bad CD drive to me. Windows recovery disks won't work, and then Ubuntu one fails as well with a read error?
  • ford
    ford Posts: 24
    It isn't necessarily the disc. This could also be a RAM issue, or if your HDDs are setup on a RAID and your kernel version is older (this would be the reason for the Windows failures as well), or if you have an SATA/SCSI CD/DVD drive and an older kernel (this could also be the reason for Windows). There are several possible reasons for an error like this and you would need to eliminate each one before you could real figure what is wrong.

    The disc drive could be the error, but you may end up wasting several CDs in trying to eliminate that as the error. You could swap RAM with a known working machine. You could do the same with power supplies as an incorrect voltage could easily cause a disc drive malfunction. You could have a corrupted disc, but why is the disc corrupted? If it's a NIC error, router error, or simple a bad connection coming into the home, you would want to use something like bittorrent and check the torrent when finished to an MD5sum to make sure that it isn't corrupted, and you could then burn to disc and have a successful install. Then again your connection could be fine and your HDD could be faulty, in which case you would want to have someone else make the disc, and then buy a new HDD and then install. A RAM error can mess everything up. I once thought I had a bad HDD, and then thought I had a bad CD/DVD... only to find out both were solid, and my only error was RAM. Wasted a lot of money over that issue. In the end, all of these may check out, and your problem could be your mobo.

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