has it yet been determined that the cd is in fact working and bootable? I've seen people download the iso with winrar or a similar compression program installed, see the icon and open and extract the files to a folder, then burn the dir to a cd. autorun works, but no bootability.
another issue that i have personally encountered with attempting to boot from a cd is an older drive being (excessively) slow to read, whether its from dirty lense or a fading laser diode, whatever... and timing out before reading the boot info. since the computer has an 8.4 gig hard drive, I would guess it's got some age to it. I dont know if I missed it or if it hasnt been said, but how was the previous ubuntu installed? what's different from this time? hope this might help Jim On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 3:17 PM, Ian W. Wright <watch...@dsl.pipex.com>wrote: > Jon wrote:- > <<Not completely true. Many BIOS's attempt to read the > partition table > and the boot sector from the boot partition during the > self-test, and > will hang there for a long time if they can't find it. I > guess it is a > stupid timeout waiting for the drive to come on line. 10 > seconds would > be reasonable, but many BIOS wait for 5 - 20 minutes in this > condition. > I usually just wait it out, but if I am going to be powering > off and on > a few times before loading software, then I will format the > first > partition so I only have to experience the long wait the > very first time. > > When you let the long timeout finally run out, you get a > message "no > boot sector found" or similar unless there is a bootable > floppy or CD > enabled in the BIOS boot list ahead of the hard drive and in > the drive.>> > > That was really my intention with the suggestion I made - > boot from a utility floppy and partition the hard drive so > that it won't wait around looking for partitions - plus, you > at least have the reassurance that you are doing something > positive!! We know from Jim's original post that the hard > drive was working OK in that computer before he scrubbed it > with DBan, so the problem is not to do with hardware > compatibility, BIOS etc. etc. - its simply that all the > partitions and maybe the boot sector have been nuked... > > Ian > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Stay on top of everything new and different, both inside and > around Java (TM) technology - register by April 22, and save > $200 on the JavaOne (SM) conference, June 2-5, 2009, San Francisco. > 300 plus technical and hands-on sessions. Register today. > Use priority code J9JMT32. http://p.sf.net/sfu/p > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stay on top of everything new and different, both inside and around Java (TM) technology - register by April 22, and save $200 on the JavaOne (SM) conference, June 2-5, 2009, San Francisco. 300 plus technical and hands-on sessions. Register today. Use priority code J9JMT32. http://p.sf.net/sfu/p _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
