Help Dual booting XP and Ubuntu

by volitaire77 Jul 27, 2008 4:50AM PDT

Need help dual booting Ubuntu 8.04 with windows XP. System is a Dell Intel Pentium 3 with 256 MB of Ram running sp2; it was previously upgraded from Windows 2000 and cleaned out by the original owner. I have an Ubuntu distro cd but when I try to boot from that cd to run the Ubuntu installer like instructed on the Ubuntu website, it just goes right into XP. I set the BIOS to boot from the CD drive first but the same thing happens. What could be causing this problem? Is there something obvious I'm missing?

Discussion is locked

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"try to boot from that cd to run the Ubuntu installer

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Jul 27, 2008 5:23AM PDT

"try to boot from that cd to run the Ubuntu installer"...

This is caused by just a few things.

1. The CD was not made correctly. Tell others exactly how it was made.
2. The CD drive lens is dirty. Fix? Clean it.
3. The CD drive has aged and lost the ability to boot. Fix? Replace the drive.
Bob

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Thank you but...

by volitaire77 Jul 27, 2008 6:15AM PDT

Someone made the CD in question for me, perhaps they made it incorrectly. However, I have also tried to run Ubuntu 6.06 which I received with a book on Ubuntu. The result was no different from the first CD. I will check on the drive, but could you recommend a way to clean the drive lens? Thank you.

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Try...

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Jul 27, 2008 6:17AM PDT

Type CD LENS CLEANER on google.

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hmm...

by volitaire77 Jul 27, 2008 6:47AM PDT

Sorry for the dumb question, but how would I tell if the drive was defective? It plays CD's fine, but this is really stumping me. Thanks again

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It's a zombie.

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Jul 27, 2008 10:00AM PDT

But only half dead. It's an issue that wipes out many from fixing it. The drive works for the most part. To test we swap the drive out.

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Thanks for your help

by volitaire77 Jul 27, 2008 11:42PM PDT

I've heard of some distros coming on USB drives; if it is the drive I might consider going that route. Thanks!

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You have a XP bootable cd/dvd?

by ahtoi Jul 28, 2008 2:31AM PDT

try that to test the boot ability of the cd drive. If that doesn't work then double check your boot sequence setting.

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Alas, I do not.

by volitaire77 Jul 31, 2008 2:49AM PDT

This is an older machine which was given for free by a friend; I don't have an of the original stuff. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

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Did you prepare the drive for another OS?

by white-bread Jul 31, 2008 6:52AM PDT

Did you use a tool such as GParted, Knoppix, Fedora Live, or Ubuntu Live to resize the NTFS/FAT partition to allow room for / and swap?
If you are still having trouble there is an option that comes from slackware which allows you to install without any media.
http://www.slackware.com Go to install help and FAQ and there will be a section on installing from an image.

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Thanks;I did not use those tools.

by volitaire77 Jul 31, 2008 6:58AM PDT

Do I need to do that? There is barely anything on the Win XP partition and I was unaware that I needed to resize it. I'm going to check out slackware though.

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If the computer cannot boot from a cd, then...

by ahtoi Jul 31, 2008 2:55PM PDT

You need a bootable floppy disc. Sorry I can't tell you how; it has been a long time since I have done that.

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Installing Ubuntu : The easy way

by Pcfreakske2000 Aug 2, 2008 5:35AM PDT

Just search on Download.com for "Wubi". It will install Ubuntu automatically for you, without any problems. There is no bootable cd required.

You could try that one out.

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forgot to add something

by Pcfreakske2000 Aug 2, 2008 5:39AM PDT

I have a dual boot with Windows XP and Ubuntu and I haven't had any issues with it.

With Wubi you don't need to worry about partitioning and stuff. But you could make a partition yourself first and install it on that partition.

I had an empty partition on my old harddrive, which I recovered from my old desktop. I used that to install Ubuntu on, just select the partition that you created and fill in a username and password and hit "Install".

There is really nothing much to it. It's quite easy to do it.

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Wow!

by volitaire77 Aug 2, 2008 11:57AM PDT

Thank you very much, I will certainly try that. It's tough working with second hand hardware because you never know what works and what doesn't
Thanks again!

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(NT) (NT) No problem, glad to have helped you

by Pcfreakske2000 Aug 20, 2008 4:15AM PDT

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it's simple really

by B123456H Aug 29, 2008 7:42AM PDT

Use an easy app called wubi (windows ubuntu installer)
it does all the hard stuff for you without compromising the windows installation.

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