booting ubuntu 14.10

Asked by Brian

I have a Compaq Presario S4100NX which previously had xp on it; It has 2.5 ghz, 1gb ram, 80 gb IDE drive, a WI-FI Card, Nvidia Geforce 6200.

I could not get ubuntu 14.10 to install at all; I removed the video card, and managed to get it installed;
I shut down the pc and reinstalled the video card, with the DVI pluged to the card and display.

The system would not boot; only in recovery mode was I able to get to the desktop; without the video card working the system is way too slow; so I found and installed the driver for the card. (legacy driver) then tried reboot; still same thing it boots to a black screen; I then have to just power it off, turn it back on and do advanced options, recovery resume to get the desktop.

The video card is working fine, however the same issue on start every time.
I have tried the community, forums, youtube, the endless libraries of questions/answers even boot repair; nothing!!!

I have tried it all; frankly I am pretty stupid with Linux, and I just wanted to revive this old PC for my dad.

Frankly I am ready to throw in the towel! so far any support has been quite non existent, and what support I have gotten has failed.

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michael (yellupcm-gmail) said :
#1

Brian
Please give more information. How much ram is installed on the computer? Give some details on your installation procedure. Did you do the MD5sum check? Give some information on how you partitioned your hard drive. The answers, you give, will help to find why, 14.10 will not install. Are you aware that Ubuntu 14.10 will no longer be supported after July 2015? In my opinion, 14.04 is a better choice. It will be supported until April 2019. I am using a Nvidia GeForce 6200 on an older computer. The operating system is Xubuntu 12.04.

Revision history for this message
actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said :
#2

Does the system have a make and model?
Are you dual booting the system?
What video card are you pulling in and out of the system?
What CPU do you have?

Revision history for this message
Brian (bjam4truth) said :
#3

I posted that in my question; it has 1024 mb of ram.
I let the installation do the partition, and I selected encryption.
I had it completely remove windows XP.
I have no idea what MD5sum check is.
The funny thing is; the image I downloaded and burned was supposed to be
ubuntu 14.04 LTS when I installed it ended up being 14.10

Brian Jamieson
On Apr 14, 2015 10:07 PM, "michael" <email address hidden>
wrote:

> Your question #265218 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/265218
>
> michael posted a new comment:
> Brian
> Please give more information. How much ram is installed on the computer?
> Give some details on your installation procedure. Did you do the MD5sum
> check? Give some information on how you partitioned your hard drive. The
> answers, you give, will help to find why, 14.10 will not install. Are you
> aware that Ubuntu 14.10 will no longer be supported after July 2015? In my
> opinion, 14.04 is a better choice. It will be supported until April 2019. I
> am using a Nvidia GeForce 6200 on an older computer. The operating system
> is Xubuntu 12.04.
>
> --
> You received this question notification because you asked the question.
>

Revision history for this message
Brian (bjam4truth) said :
#4

I thought I included that in my comment.
It is a Compaq Presario S4100NX.
I had the installation wipe out Windows XP.
The video card is a Tangca PCI card Nvidia geforce 6200

Brian Jamieson
On Apr 15, 2015 1:31 AM, "actionparsnip" <
<email address hidden>> wrote:

> Your question #265218 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/265218
>
> Status: Open => Needs information
>
> actionparsnip requested more information:
> Does the system have a make and model?
> Are you dual booting the system?
> What video card are you pulling in and out of the system?
> What CPU do you have?
>
> --
> To answer this request for more information, you can either reply to
> this email or enter your reply at the following page:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/265218
>
> You received this question notification because you asked the question.
>

Revision history for this message
michael (yellupcm-gmail) said :
#5

Brian
I seem to be going blind in my old age, you did give the ram. Check sites below for information on MD5sum.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VerifyIsoHowto

I recommend Ubuntu 14.04, even if you have to burn another disk. Xubuntu 14.04 is another option, it requires less resources. Did you get to the option " Try Ubuntu " ? If so what happened?

Revision history for this message
Brian (bjam4truth) said :
#6

Someone else asked what CPU it has; it is a intel Celeron (R) 2.5 ghz {
i486 } I believe.
Not sure if that makes a difference; the hardware requirements on the
ubuntu site are a bit confusing.
I did run check the disk before installation + physically looked at how the
files appeared on the disk; everything appeared to look okay.
I had selected the Download link at the official Ubuntu site.
I had selected the try Ubuntu option; it did nothing; I tried install it
did nothing as well;
I tried every available option under f6 nothing happened for both try &
install.
I powered it down & removed the video card, then tried again;

The try Ubuntu failed; I selected install and initially a screen came up
that said 0.64000 MP BIOS Bug 8254 not connected to timer IO APIC then to
my surprise the install menu came up; so I installed it.
Unfortunately the PC was very slow and not very responsive; so I powered it
down and reinstalled the video card.
When I powered it up it first displayed the video card info, then the Bios
screen, then the 0.64000 mp bios bug 8254 not connected to timer IO APIC;
then the screen went black and nothing happened.
I then powered it off, then back on; only this time selecting f10 recovery;
at which point if I select unbuntu recovery, then resume at the next screen
the desktop loads.
I did find and install the legacy driver for the video card; however the
exact problem reoccurred at start up.

I tried other suggestions that have failed.
I tried boot repair disk from source forge;
Well now I do not see the 0.64000 thing anymore; just a whole lot of things
flash by real fast before I get the black screen.
The only thing I was able to speed read was something about a broken pipe?

In any case recovery mode is the only way I can get to the desktop; once
there it seems to work okay; however I don't think my 80yr old father is
going to be able to digest all that to start the PC and load the desktop.

I had this machine working excellent with XP with everything up to date
including chipset, bios, video card, wi-fi card etc.

Now I have a nightmare; sure I could try another distro however I think
figuring out what is going on first might be a better idea.

I did try a mint mate 32 bit disk as well it also did nothing.

Brian Jamieson
On Apr 15, 2015 9:16 AM, "michael" <email address hidden>
wrote:

> Your question #265218 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/265218
>
> michael posted a new comment:
> Brian
> I seem to be going blind in my old age, you did give the ram. Check sites
> below for information on MD5sum.
>
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM
>
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VerifyIsoHowto
>
> I recommend Ubuntu 14.04, even if you have to burn another disk. Xubuntu
> 14.04 is another option, it requires less resources. Did you get to
> the option " Try Ubuntu " ? If so what happened?
>
> --
> You received this question notification because you asked the question.
>

Revision history for this message
michael (yellupcm-gmail) said :
#7

I have seen the screen in speed reading mode. If you could attempt to read more, and see if either of below statements are there.

Could not write bytes:broken pipe

error while reading descriptor: broken pipe

To rule out any possible ram problems, can you test it, using Test Memory. Will the screen ( brown screen white Ubuntu ) that is in site below come up?

http://askubuntu.com/questions/14303/how-can-i-check-my-ram-and-hard-drive-for-errors

If you cannot get that screen, you can download free memory test, at site below.

http://www.memtest86.com/

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said :
#8

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.