Hi all, I have a HP G56 130SA BLK Laptop

Hi

So are you trying to wipe everything off the disk and just install Windows 7 from scratch?

What is going wrong anyway? Does Windows give you some sort of error message?

I have never owned a laptop, so perhaps I'm not the best person to help :) but I know that laptops from some manufacturers sometimes have some sort of special (hidden?) partition at the start of the drive. Not sure if that's the case with the Sony Vaio and I'm not sure if that's something you need to concern yourself with.

In theory you should be able to do this:

1.) Boot off an Ubuntu Live CD.
2.) Open up a Terminal (under Accessories in the menu.)
3.) Type in: sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1

That should wipe out your partition table completely, so Windows should see it as if the disk had never been used (unless it's got a GPT on it, but that's not likely if it only had Windows XP and then Ubuntu on it up to now.)

It's not a laptop it's a desktop.
And the Install CD won't even talk to me all I get is a message that says something about it doesn't like how it's partitioned. And yes I wanna wipe out the hd and load 7, and maybe after that find a spot for ubuntu but at this point i really just want to get 7 on.

It's not a laptop it's a desktop.
And the Install CD won't even talk to me all I get is a message that says something about it doesn't like how it's partitioned. And yes I wanna wipe out the hd and load 7, and maybe after that find a spot for ubuntu but at this point i really just want to get 7 on.

I put the sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1, in the terminal, rebooted, took out the ubuntu cd, changed the bios to boot from the dvd where the windows 7 disk is and got this message: DISK BOOT FAILURE INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER. Needless to say pressing enter gave me the same message over. But, at least it's a new you can't do this message. Thanks for answering.

Are you sure that Win DVD is O.K.?If you are then BIOS can be problem.I know (from experience unfortunately) that sometimes BIOS doesn´t accepts how you put boot order.You probably can select one time boot (or temporary sorry I can not find right word because as you cab see I use broken English) with one of F keys.For me it is F12. Try that way and if you can boot Win7 you cam wipe all partitions and install desired OS.Good luck and let as know if you run into troubles.

I dint have any problems setting my bios it went right to the dvd, it's the software disk with the windows 7 on it doesnt like what it's looking at and won't proceed with installation. But thanks for the time you've taken. Anybody else have a clue???

oooo getting closer, thanks ken! BUT now I'm getting BOOTMGR is missing press alt-ctl-delete to reboot. So I went in to bios and tried to get it to boot from the HDD instead of the dvd and same result. Soooo I put the ubuntu disk back in, changed the bios again, booted from the cd and here I am a woman without a bootmgr. Anybody have any idea about what to do now??

Also, when I got this PC, it's second hand by the way, it had a C drive and a D drive would that make any difference? Of course when I loaded the ubuntu it married all my gigs together. help I think i'm close if we can get passed this pesky bootmgr issue!

Hi :)

Lets do this with a bit less panic. Stay cool.

Please put the Ubuntu Cd in the cd/dvd-drive and boot up the machine. This should get you to a menu with "Try Ubuntu without changes to the machine". This should get you to a working Ubuntu desktop? Please let me know how this goes. We call this a "LiveCd session" (if it works)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Sylvia,

As Tom said...stay cool! Seems Tom has the same opinion on how to fix this as I do :)

BTW I am not an expert..just been doing this stuff for a long time and I try to explain in my simple way.

As Tom said You need to boot the live cd and use it only as live not installed.

GParted is the prog in there that will sort out your partitioning no matter how many disks/partitions.

You said that it had two drives..was that 1 drive with 2 partitions or 2 individual hdds?? is it a desktop or laptop?

You need to be clear on drives and partitions.

. do you have RAID?

bootmgr error might be coming from a hdd that you have set in bios as the 1st boot device and ubuntu is actually installed on the other hdd. which you need to reset bios boot order.

the most important part is to determine what is happening with your hdds and partitions then you can take the next step.

can you give a bit more info on model make of your machine and this might help in some way as to where you are at hardware wise.

let me know how you go.

ken

Sylvia,

Silly me...i should have read a bit more...sony vaio...laptop?? if it is then if it had windows7 on it b4 then it has had a c+d+100mb special bootpartition and it might even have a hidden partition for windows recovery( i am not familiar with sony but toshiba/acer/asus have this type of thing)all on one hdd.

i think its important to resolve that aspect thru gparted first. you need to get it back to one whole disk first.

ken

Hi :)

I think Ken is going a bit tooo fast and asking for stuff you might not fully understand right now. Perhaps he has never worked as a door-man. The first thing is to find out what the machine thinks the situation is. Then we can take it from there. "Slow is smooth."

We can find answers to most of these questions quite easily if you can boot up from an Ubuntu Cd and then copy&paste the results of a few things into here.

Please let us know if you can manage to switch the machine on and get an Ubuntu Cd into the cd/dvd-drive. If you can get that far can you then re-start the machine? and let us know what happens. Do you get an Ubuntu menu?

Regards from
Tom :)

Tom has a steady Eddy approach and might be the best way to suit you. from
you manner of writing Sylvia i gathered you understood partitioning and
installing. I will move to the sideline and see how Tom assists you. who
knows ..i might yet become a door man ;)

regards
ken

On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 7:09 PM, Tom <email address hidden>wrote:

> Question #108389 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/108389
>
> Tom proposed the following answer:
> Hi :)
>
> I think Ken is going a bit tooo fast and asking for stuff you might not
> fully understand right now. Perhaps he has never worked as a door-man.
> The first thing is to find out what the machine thinks the situation is.
> Then we can take it from there. "Slow is smooth."
>
> We can find answers to most of these questions quite easily if you can
> boot up from an Ubuntu Cd and then copy&paste the results of a few
> things into here.
>
> Please let us know if you can manage to switch the machine on and get an
> Ubuntu Cd into the cd/dvd-drive. If you can get that far can you then
> re-start the machine? and let us know what happens. Do you get an Ubuntu
> menu?
>
> Regards from
> Tom :)
>
> --
> You received this question notification because you are a direct
> subscriber of the question.
>

Hi :)

Err that reminds me ...

What do you do if you see a fireman ?

(Put it out, man)

I think there is room for all. Lots questions to be answered. Dozens of different approaches for each question. Hopefully 1 person answering might stumble on the "right" way for each question. I just think that too many people have tried to be too hasty with this question and we somehow still haven't found out the crucial stuff that would help us fix it. It would be nice to see some progress here! ;)

Regards from
Tom :)

doh! man

i agree.

On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 1:12 AM, Tom <email address hidden>wrote:

> Question #108389 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/108389
>
> Tom proposed the following answer:
> Hi :)
>
> Err that reminds me ...
>
> What do you do if you see a fireman ?
>
> (Put it out, man)
>
> I think there is room for all. Lots questions to be answered. Dozens of
> different approaches for each question. Hopefully 1 person answering
> might stumble on the "right" way for each question. I just think that
> too many people have tried to be too hasty with this question and we
> somehow still haven't found out the crucial stuff that would help us fix
> it. It would be nice to see some progress here! ;)
>
> Regards from
> Tom :)
>
> --
> You received this question notification because you are a direct
> subscriber of the question.
>

Sorry not to have responded, but, finally, after talking to at the minimum, 4 microsoft people (I only called one but they like to take turns calling you after you call them I suppose). I got this mess taken care of. I put the Ubuntu on another PC so that I could learn it better because I really enjoy it. I'm going to have to come clean here.. What ended up being the biggest issue with installing the Windows 7 software was.... wait for it.... My friggin DVD player wasn't as operational as I thought it was. I can almost hear all ya'll cussing me now, but, I would like to say that I DID have to delete the partitions and convert the hard drive to NTFS before it would install with the DVD player I ganked out of an old PC. And for all the time you all took with me, I am super appreciative! I swear that DVD player worked not that long ago... Anyway, honestly, I couldn't have done it without your help I just asked the questions BEFORE I actually needed to. Thank you community. Try not to run and hide when on some rainy afternoon I'm teaching myself this stuff and start listing questions like an idiot again!
SACollins

Thanks 1aussie.ken, that solved my question.

Oh, and to answer your questions about how fast I can learn. I din't know anything about partioning, BUT, I'm an idiot about researching till I find out what I need to know so fast or slow woulda got me there either way. AND, personally, I'm the kind of person who prefers a slow step by step explanation on things cause there's usually something to be gained with it, BUT I'll still mutter under my breath that you must think I'm an idiot when you do more handholding. So, there's no winner here! Thanks again guys, you rock!

Hi :)

A kinda semi-WoooHooo there! Really glad you got this sorted, congrats :))

Please do ask questions a lot
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+addquestion
preferably a different thread for each question. I think most of us could od with a little practice. I think i need to give 1 quick answer if i'm the first responder but perhaps also ask something to diagnose just in case my first guess is not quite right. As you say there is no perfect way to do this and i thought the guys were great too :)

Another advantage to asking a lot of questions is that it sometimes help build up a better knowledge of the system. It's how i keep learning anyway :)

On any fresh(ish) install of ubuntu it is worth running though the medibuntu page just to get all the multimedia stuff pretty well sorted in 1 easy session
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu
First few times i used it i had no idea what they were talking about so i just copy&pasted everything from the coding brackets. The wrong stuff just refused to install and sent me error messages but the right stuff did install. Gradually i read it over the course of a couple of years and a lot of installs. I think i nearly understand some of it now :)

Anyway, welcome to linux-land, especially the ubuntu corner of it :)
Congrats & regards from
Tom :)

Sylvia,

That's what the community aspect is about. Asking questions, trying to help
each other and those at the coal face doing the extra hard work to get the
right answers to result in a superior OS. UBUNTU...if my memory serves me
correctly...means "Humanity to others". Anyone else reading this please
correct me if I am wrong! So i guess you have had part in the essence of
what Ubuntu is. A lot of people come together to provide a free OS and i
think they do a great job. I get the feeling you will try again :) Good
luck.

ken.

On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 10:01 PM, Sylvia Collins <
<email address hidden>> wrote:

> Question #108389 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/108389
>
> Status: Answered => Solved
>
> Sylvia Collins confirmed that the question is solved:
> Sorry not to have responded, but, finally, after talking to at the minimum,
> 4 microsoft people (I only called one but they like to take turns calling
> you after you call them I suppose). I got this mess taken care of. I put
> the Ubuntu on another PC so that I could learn it better because I really
> enjoy it. I'm going to have to come clean here.. What ended up being the
> biggest issue with installing the Windows 7 software was.... wait for it....
> My friggin DVD player wasn't as operational as I thought it was. I can
> almost hear all ya'll cussing me now, but, I would like to say that I DID
> have to delete the partitions and convert the hard drive to NTFS before it
> would install with the DVD player I ganked out of an old PC. And for all
> the time you all took with me, I am super appreciative! I swear that DVD
> player worked not that long ago... Anyway, honestly, I couldn't have done
> it without your help I just asked the questions BEFORE I actually needed to.
> Thank you community. Try not to run and hide when on some rainy afternoon
> I'm teaching myself this stuff and start listing questions like an idiot
> again!
> SACollins
>
> --
> You received this question notification because you are a direct
> subscriber of the question.
>

Hi :)

It is better to post a new question to start a new thread
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+addquestion

Usually when you install ubuntu it is worth working through the Medibuntu page
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu
to sort out all the multimedia.

Then click on

System - Administration - "Synaptic Package Manager"

Either of Synaptic's search tools should help you find theses 3 packages

vlc
mplayer
cheese

also try finding the Adobe 'non-free' flash player by doing a search for

flash player

install all 4 packages. Vlc & mplayer sort out playing movies. Flash sorts YouTube and stuff. Cheese should sort the camera.
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)