39 replies to this topic

[Peter1]

When I viewed Ubuntu on the laptop, it said to enhance drivers you pay extra - I really do not know why it said that as I thought all was free too. I was running the diagnostics with both Dell's pc checkup and Windows F12 and the two bays for cds and dvds checked out fine. The whole machine checked out fine for hardware. I have never had any cd dvd issues and I play videos etc. It is only with the Ubuntu iso disc. While running the diagnostic I left the Ubuntu in the bay by error and got a messarge that Ubntu was installed. When I rebooted sure enough there was Win 7 and Unbuntu bneath it. When I booted into Ubuntu, the same black screen with data on it was frozen and needed a hard boot. All the tests say my desktop is fine and my experience with cds and dvds supports that. I don't see how I have a problem machine if only the Ubuntu disc freezes. If I am not mistakemn I have tried the boot you are referring to. Correct me if I am wrong but I restarted the pc with the disc already in the bay and tapped F12. When I see boot orders I just select the one the disc is in and hit enter - freeze = hard boot. I really wanted to use Ubuntu but the forum does not respond and I will need a new power supply if I keep this up. Peter

[terry1966]

don't tap anything just boot into win7 then exit it using the restart option and let the desktop boot the live cd by itself. (you need to have set the cd as first boot option in bios first before booting into the windows os and only insert the disk into the drive when in windows, just before restarting.) no idea how you managed to install the os by mistake, but same thing applies to it, leave the cd out of the drive, boot into the win7 os first then choose restart pc this time at the menu boot into ubuntu. see if both/either ways work. after reading a bit more of that topic i posted i think it may be a graphics problem not uefi like i first thought, without having my nieces laptop to run some tests on and not knowing what graphics card is in your machine, but by booting into the windows os first it seems to initialize the graphics card so it then works when warm rebooted into a linux os. no there is no hardware problem with your machine, just an incompatibility problem with a linux os, that i have never seen or heard of before except with my nieces laptop, that seems to be fixed by booting into the windows os first.

Edited by terry1966, 21 August 2012 - 03:33 PM.

[Peter1]

Terri Sorry not to have explained better. One of the attepts was to do as you suggest. I set cd in bios to be first, and saved it. Then with the dvd in the bay I restarted from within Windows and let the machine handle the dvd opening or not. No tapping -let the boot order per the BIOS do the selecting It was the same as all the other ways I tried it. One more hard boot won't hurt so tomorrow I will do it again - I did so many things I want to be sure and I'll let you know. I have been surfing and find I am not the Lone Ranger when it comes to this issue. If I did not have two pcs, I would swear it does not work. Peter PS - Is it true that the trial performance is not as good in quality as a regular install? Maybe drivers are not the best etc. And, perhaps the reason I could not access the internet with FF was because it was a trial performance. I would not like it as it was in the trial but think and hope a regular installation would be better. What makes me think this will not work and has nothing to do with the dvd bay is the fact that after Ubuntu was installed, and I clicked on Ubuntu in the boot up choice, that same black screen with white data appeared. There has to be a reason. I'll try and be back.

Edited by Peter1, 21 August 2012 - 04:30 PM.

[terry1966]

the performance difference is because when used as a live cd, everything is stored in memory and read from the cd, the data transfer speed of a cd is a lot slower than a hard drives and also the memory space taken up by the os leaves less that is usually used for data manipulation, again slowing things down. so yes an installed system is much faster than using a live cd. has for not being able to connect to the internet on the laptop, was you hard wired(ethernet cable) to your router or trying to connect wireless, if wireless i'd say you needed to either connect to the router or install the correct driver manually first for it to work. hard wired it should of just worked, i haven't seen a hard wired linux pc fail to connect to the internet, that i can remember of anyway. when you boot the live cd, regardless of warm or cold boot, exactly what do you see on the screen before doing anything else, you should have a menu that is displayed for 30 seconds or so showing different options to choose from. then you should be choosing to run as a live cd and it's at this point everything stops working, correct? even after you booted into windows to do the warm boot fix first, that i thought might get you to a desktop? if you've done the warm boot correctly like you said and it still doesn't boot to a desktop i'm out of ideas, at least until i can get my hands on my nieces laptop to see exactly what the problem was with that, which seems to be the same thing your experiencing with your desktop. booting your pc multiply times won't do it any harm, short term either, it's just not a thing recommended to do everyday, so nothing to worry about, especially when trying to problem solve an issue that needs multiple reboots.

[Peter1]

I look forward to your obtaining your niece's pc. I have done all you say but all I see after I hit enter is the black screen with alot of white data. Just before hit enter, I see the different boot choices. I then select the right one and hit enter. It seems like something is stuck. Btw, I found that Ihad to look for and learn to use bcdedit as Ubuntu was stuck in the boot order and registry restore would not remove it. Oh well, I learned something new.

[Ztruker]

I never use BCDEdit, I use EasyBCD instead. Nice graphical interface that is very easy to use.

Edited by Ztruker, 22 August 2012 - 05:49 PM.

[Peter1]

I never use BCDEdit, I use EasyBCD instead. Nice graphical interface that is very easy to use.

>>When I saw the dual boot with Ubuntu, I surfed for the answer and found BCDEdit with a tutorial.

I will now make note of EasyBCD for future needs.
What does the acronym stand for and what are its uses besides removing the name of a stuck dual boot like mine, if there are any?

[terry1966]

removing the grub menu and putting back the win7 boot menu does not remove ubuntu from your pc. it depends on how it got installed in the first place but you might find it in the add/remove programs in win7 if it was wubi installed or if it got installed fully with partition changes to your hard drive you may need to delete them and resize your win7 partition to fully remove it from your pc. will let you know if i can find why linux won't boot on my nieces pc when i get it too. 1 last thing to try (should of thought of it earlier), at the menu screen hit the F6 (i think it's that key anyway) you will get a popup just use the arrow keys to select "nomodeset" hit enter then select the boot live cd option and hit enter and see if it now boots for you.

[Ztruker]

EasyBCD is basically a graphical front end to BCDEdit. It can do whatever BCDEdit can do. Change names, add/remove boot partitions, etc.

[Tomk]

What does the acronym stand for and what are its uses besides removing the name of a stuck dual boot like mine, if there are any?

BCD stands for Boot Configuration Data