Ubuntu

Ubuntu Won't Boot on Windows Vista (Toshiba Satellite)

Asked by Eric Sleri

My parents have a Toshiba Satellite A135-S4407 running Windows Vista. The computer would start up and go to the error screen which lets you select whether you want to start in safe mode, want to go back to the last known good configuration, or start up normally. None of these worked so I figured I would have to reinstall windows.

I decided to boot up with Ubuntu first to try and save some of their data before reinstalling windows. I tried using a USB drive (16gb, FAT32) to boot from but it didn't work. I would be able to select the USB in the boot selection menu using F12 but it usually wouldn't go past the ubuntu screen with the five dots loading.

One time I tried with the usb, it asked me the language I wanted and then went to the aforementioned screen for at least an hour (after which I turned the computer off to try again) and one time it showed me the screen asking if I wanted to try ubuntu, install ubuntu, and a few other options, after I chose the trial option, it again went to the loading screen (after this I restarted it again because it stayed on the loading screen for several hours).

I have now tried to boot from a dvd but I have the same loading screen issue (it's been on the loading screen for at least 3 hours now). Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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Ubfan (ubfan1) said : 		#1

When you are at the five dots, try typing ESC to get to the underlying text screen, which might have error messages which indicate a problem.

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Thomas Krüger (thkrueger) said : 		#2

Have you tried an other USB stick? Some have a very bad performance.
Also if you created the Stick with the USB media creator in Ubuntu, please make sure, you select no persistance. It will speed up things a lot.

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Eric Sleri (2miler87) said : 		#3

I pressed esc each time and it did show some errors. They were different each time. What should I do about that? The errors happened with the usb and the cd. I'll try another usb too.

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Ubfan (ubfan1) said : 		#4

1) Did you md5sum check the downloaded iso?
  See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM
  Check the number against the listing in the link for your release listed at
  http://releases.ubuntu.com under the MD5SUMS link.
2) If using a CD/DVD, did you burn the disc as slowly as possible?
  See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto
3) Did you select the media check before trying to install?
 https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/CDIntegrityCheck
4) Did you ever do a "memory check" (another live-media menu choice) on your PC?
Doing the above can save you a lot of time struggling with a bad install media.

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Eric Sleri (2miler87) said : 		#5

I started the memory check. It has been running for more than 7 hours now. Is that normal? Btw, I don't understand how to do the md5sum test after reading the link you provided. If could some simplify it, I'd be very grateful. Thanks for your help!

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Ubfan (ubfan1) said : 		#6

I think the memory test runs until you stop it, but it should report errors if any found. 7 hrs with no errors is enough testing.
The md5sum program is installed by default I believe, so to run it, open a terminal (ctrl-Alt-t) , locate the iso file you want to check,
suppose it's named raring.iso in the Downloads directory, and type md5sum Downloads/raring.iso
In less than a minute, the md5sum output will print on the terminal, and is just a big number, which you check against the Ubuntu hashes found in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuHashes -- locate the exact iso you downloaded, and compare the number you find there against the one you just generated. If not identical, the download was bad, (or you got an altered iso), so you need to do another download (from another source maybe). The torrents provide some additional checking, but I have no experience with them.

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