Installing Ubunut on old Laptop

.Griff.

.Griff.

.Griff.

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I've inherited an old Laptop, A Fujitsu Siemens V1000 to be exact and I'm trying to install Ubuntu on it. The laptop runs XP and surprisingly Windows 7 ok albeit a bit slowly so I figured Ubuntu would be not problem.

I've downloaded the latest release and burned the image to disc. It's booting from it ok as I can briefly see "Isolinux 3. something something" displayed on screen for a second but it then "freezes" with this image on screen.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v427/griff_90/d9c03dfb.jpg

Any ideas?

Edit - Spelling error in title.. Oops
 
when you boot from the live cd and get to the option to boot the kernal, delete the word quiet and post the output of the error.

This is why I hate distro's like ubuntu, in the old days it would boot with text telling you what it was doing, now they have covered it with a brown flashy screen :p
 
Have you tried something like the Debian netinstall on it to see if you can get the errors that you're experiencing with Ubuntu or tried another distro like Linux Mint or Peppermint Ice?

Is there an equivalent to "safe mode" for the Ubuntu live CD to see the boot messages rather than the boot screen?
 
afraser2k said:
Have you tried something like the Debian netinstall on it to see if you can get the errors that you're experiencing with Ubuntu or tried another distro like Linux Mint or Peppermint Ice?

Is there an equivalent to "safe mode" for the Ubuntu live CD to see the boot messages rather than the boot screen?
Click to expand...


yes it's called verbose, which by removing the quiet option it will boot with text to show whats it is doing.


Try linuxmint.

Tell us what happens, it's based of ubuntu, and ubuntu is based of debian.
 
I had nothing but trouble installing ubuntu and linux mint on an old IBM laptop. In the end I got it to install using the alternate version (ubuntu) ie the non graphical user interface one. It's still a wizard type installation. However the problem cropped up again, this time it wouldn't boot (black screen) and eventually found it's because it didn't like the network card in the laptop. Having replaced it, it solved my problem and boots fine now.

If you still can't figure out why it doesn't work, maybe just pull outthe network card and boot the cd to see if it gets past the boot screen.
 
Ok trying Linuxmint now..

Got 5 green dots on screen and lots of disc noise..

Edit - Now a black screen.

Edit 2 - Rebooting and trying again.

Edit 3 - Same thing. I get 5 green/white dots in the centre of the screen and lots of disc/HD activity for about a minute. Then the screen goes black and all disc/HD activity stops.

:(
 
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I can certainly guarantee it's because it's being picky with a particular hardware in your laptop. My laptop would shutdown the hard drive as well when I had that problem.
Could be graphics chipset but you can't really do nothing about it. That's why I suggested to just take out the network card. It's straightforward and won't need to take apart your laptop to take it out and it might save you time in the long run :)
 
If I press the escape key when the green/white dots are on screen I get -

"process:279: Glib-WARNING **: getpwuid_r(): failed due to unknown user id (0)"

Edit - How do I take the network card out without ripping the laptop to pieces?!?
 
You usually have to just unscrew panel at the bottom and maybe unplug a cable and pull out the card. It's kind of like ungrading the ram. You might have to refer to your user manual for specific instructions though.
 
Might be getting somewhere. I ran it in comparability mode and now I'm looking at the desktop.

Just need to figure out what to do from here..
 
It's all installed now and boots up fine.

Next step it getting my Netgear WG111T USB wireless adapter to work. I've gone into "control centre" and tried to install the driver using "Windows Wireless Drivers" and pointed it to the relevant INF file on a usb stick but it says invalid driver.

Any ideas or do I need to go to PC World and pay a fortune for a lengthy cat5 cable? :(

By the way sorry for these questions, I'm new to Linux if you hadn't guessed already.
 
Cheers..

Re cat5 cables I know they're not expensive at all but what I meant was if I wanted one this afternoon then my only option is PC World where they obviously charge a fortune.

If I can't get wireless working I'll pop down to that shop that sells assorted cables and assorted electrical components tomorrow.
 
.Griff. said:
Cheers..

Re cat5 cables I know they're not expensive at all but what I meant was if I wanted one this afternoon then my only option is PC World where they obviously charge a fortune.

If I can't get wireless working I'll pop down to that shop that sells assorted cables and assorted electrical components tomorrow.
Click to expand...

They're not that bad - they'll charge you a few quid over, £5 max if it's a long length.
 
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