Ubuntu

Install ubuntu without deleting files in windows

Asked by Jesús Eduardo

Please I really need to know if I can install ubuntu in my windows vista based PC without delete my files, I'm having some problems with windows and I REALLY NEED to recover my files, please help me

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marcobra (Marco Braida)
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Jesús Eduardo (jesuseduardo7) said : 		#1

and also can I access my files using ubuntu? thanks

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Best marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#2

Yes, you can and you will be able to access to your NTFS Windows Vista files

- Minimum system requirements to install Ubuntu 8.04.1 https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements

Download the standard Ubuntu 8.04.1 32 bits iso image from here:
http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/8.04.1/ubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso
or better using a torrent file:
http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/8.04.1/ubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso.torrent

- Please check the md5sum of your downloaded Ubuntu .iso image file, here the https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM howto, and compare with http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04.1/MD5SUMS

- Burn it on a cd rom, be sure to burn your cd at lower speed you can do usually 4x here an howto https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto

- Please also check the md5sum of your self burned cd. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM

- Boot your pc from self-burned cdrom, if it don't start from cd please modify your pc BIOS settings by accessing to it usually pressing CANC or F2 or other keys (check into your motherboard paper documentation or watch carefully the screen, usually there are tips to access BIOS, when you switch your computer on)

- then to be sure your ram is ok, boot from Ubuntu live cd main menu and at first showed menu, select the item "Memory test" to test your pc ram memory

- Here the steps to install Ubuntu 8.04.1 https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GraphicalInstall

- Watch this video that show howto install Ubuntu on a pc with Windows: http://screencasts.ubuntu.com/Installing_Ubuntu_with_Windows_Dual-Boot

- if something go wrong at startup of Ubuntu live installation when you see the first cd menu like this http://i18.tinypic.com/6tzzndc.jpg pressing F6 you can put useful startup kernel boot parameters https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions as showed here

Try to perform the "Memory test" and the "Check cd for defects" to be sure the cd is read without errors by the destination pc cdrom driver

- Booting from Ubuntu live install cd:
 * if you are in trouble with screen graphic user interface
   (usually the screen is black with a blinking cursor or screen out of range message):
- first try to dynamically change screen resolution please the press CTRL + ALT + "+" and/or CTRL + ALT + "-"
- Try to restart the graphic layer press CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE
- Here the basic step required during install process http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-desktop-ubuntu-8.04-lts-hardy-heron

If you are still in trouble... please reboot your pc and starting with Ubuntu live cd please try to put some common Ubuntu kernel live cd options you can find the boot options howto here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions

Remove the "splash" and "quiet" options to see more boot infos message and/or errors.
Then try some commons parameters by putting them one by one or together:
noacpi nolapic nodma all_generic_ide

If this don't work i suggest you to download and burn on a cd at lower speed you can do (4x), here an howto https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto, the Ubuntu alternate install cd iso image ( ubuntu-8.04.1-alternate-i386.iso ) you can download this cd from here: http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04.1/

If you are in trouble to download you can try to install and use a torrent client Deluge http://www.deluge-torrent.org/downloads.php to get your desired Ubuntu iso image http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/8.04.1/ please select a .torrent file

*** if you are installing in dual boot mode Windows + Ubuntu

Please make sure you Windows partition have no errors on it.

Booting in Windows force an a complete hard disk check.
Then reboot again in Windows and make a clean shutdown.
Be sure to boot in Windows twice and to get a clear Windows shutdown.

***

Always useful is the online Ubuntu doc https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/

Hope this helps

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Jesús Eduardo (jesuseduardo7) said : 		#3

Thank you so much for the information, the problem I'm having with windows is there appeared a blue screen with an error and I only could access in safe mode, then I called Microsoft and they told me to run a complete disk test, the blue screen didn't appear anymore but now when I try to get into my account explorer.exe stops working, I only can access with a non administrator account and I cannot have access to my files, I only have one partition, do you think this will help me get my files back?, it is really important, thanks

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marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#4

From Windows please make another a complete disk test.

Booting in Windows force an a complete hard disk check.
Then reboot again in Windows and make a clean shutdown.
Be sure to boot in Windows twice and to get a clear Windows shutdown.

Then booting your pc using Ubuntu live cd please try to access to your NTFS partition and make a backup of your relevant data, for example on a usb memory stick or to an external USB disk.
Then when your data are saved you are free to try all you want with Ubuntu.
By the way i always use Ubuntu live cd on a damaged (viruses) Win pc to save data from them, then i always install Ubuntu on that pc in dual boot mode as explained before.

hope this helps

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Jesús Eduardo (jesuseduardo7) said : 		#5

Thank you, I've done everything I can and also the people from Microsoft and HP doesn't really know what to do, this problem it's really weird, I will try these options, I hope it works, thank you for everything.

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Jesús Eduardo (jesuseduardo7) said : 		#6

Right now I tried with an old ubuntu cd (6.06 LTS) and it got frozen in "starting enterprise volume management system" when I tried to start the live cd

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Johannes Pilkahn (j-pilkahn) said : 		#7

Is this a download?
Then it's most likely a bad burn.
Also, if not, the CD must be a good 2 years old.

I'd say download a new one, check the MD5 hash beforehand or maybe give Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.net/) a go, there's hardly a better LiveCD for recovery than Knoppix.

Revision history for this message
Jesús Eduardo (jesuseduardo7) said : 		#8

Sorry, I'm new in all of these, I just downloaded the last version, how can I check the MD5SUM? is it the file MD5SUM.txt inside the .iso file? and also should I decompress the .iso to burn to the CD?

when I open that file, this is what appears:

3c097f0115167e6d85fc431e55db647f ./casper/filesystem.manifest
c301e05ae1ca6fd0ac3877d099a9f55c ./casper/filesystem.manifest-desktop
27db6ae1ce67bad27dbbc71cfa790074 ./casper/initrd.gz
ccb1262b43cf1106c2597bd2d3852680 ./casper/filesystem.squashfs
38f9886b2f2e5e05951c2a196051640c ./casper/vmlinuz
af84026479e76cb65122ded324306a55 ./dists/hardy/Release
36393c688c80a6b89e54a22fe37a4e43 ./dists/hardy/restricted/binary-i386/Packages.gz
285c43d848f34ba43ce2e23414e22cf9 ./dists/hardy/restricted/binary-i386/Release
7b9e6e27eb6eb94494e834edaa74d1e9 ./dists/hardy/restricted/binary-i386/Packages
6acb4471cfaf6790f23f940f6b1697c6 ./dists/hardy/Release.gpg
f168f419d3bc2f554b89a02ed6ce33bf ./dists/hardy/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz
b5c09269e28533a41ce04df0fd4cff0c ./dists/hardy/main/binary-i386/Release
530a8a3c41eae4bba79d874aee7c550c ./dists/hardy/main/binary-i386/Packages
461cbc7ff94fdea8008cab34b611abb8 ./pics/blue-upperright.png
cd8aa5e7fa11b1362ef1869ac6b1aa56 ./pics/blue-lowerleft.png
a025c46d5daf227adfda51d81eb90f25 ./pics/blue-upperleft.png
92091902d3ca753bb858d4682b3fc26b ./pics/logo-50.jpg
3c129ee10f707bd9dec10209d28840eb ./pics/red-upperright.png
cde56251d6cae5214227d887dee3bab7 ./pics/red-upperleft.png
20d4bdecfa6d980d663fb5b93d37a842 ./pics/red-lowerright.png
0730e775a72519aaa450a3774fca5f55 ./pics/red-lowerleft.png
16ff51c168405e575d32bae001f280e4 ./pics/debian.jpg
9e18ae797773b2677b1b7b86e2aff28d ./pics/blue-lowerright.png
7d98df84626f1c076b9bb58f3d0e8efe ./.disk/casper-uuid-generic
ed22d82c95feace67100ea245cbd847f ./.disk/release_notes_url
70de454dffa63a3cc8fdc08aa8e1840a ./.disk/info
921a887910cb6165d3c9232770a5d71b ./umenu.exe
aa52d459f0631148974436fab1749dd1 ./autorun.inf
8d6a2a045d7c0f48fe2e088f3f87b6ce ./install/README.sbm
5a93a111efeb5305075c5e077715b6cd ./install/sbm.bin
3b268753a2b1d44b6b75716e0c85a7d2 ./install/mt86plus
23d9bfe897b4264f2465e8a592ebb6e3 ./preseed/ubuntu.seed
ef8a9571087ec72a80d0ac5416767ec6 ./preseed/ltsp.seed
7e3aa6d1958baf72d369392fdb175486 ./preseed/cli.seed
a69b413b3f00e33190f9370facb51eb0 ./pool/restricted/d/drdsl/drdsl_1.2.0-1_i386.deb
b4a74e3e9921407e05e4fe335a8ee914 ./pool/restricted/l/linux-meta/avm-fritz-firmware_2.6.24.19.21_i386.deb
410de8513da5b6d9ba6e2f46fd7a8dd1 ./pool/restricted/l/linux-restricted-modules-2.6.24/avm-fritz-firmware-2.6.24-19_3.11+2.6.24.13-19.44_i386.deb
7946e5212fa9494e4391ae2dd2f36b44 ./pool/restricted/s/sl-modem/sl-modem-daemon_2.9.10+2.9.9d+e-pre2-5ubuntu4_i386.deb
43b9858b5cd8b661e7bf49ba3897c857 ./pool/main/n/ndisgtk/ndisgtk_0.8.3-1_i386.deb
19f8b3d3ccbc56cb48e32ea38fdd3b3d ./pool/main/n/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper-common_1.50-1ubuntu1_all.deb
9ede35a11c0894a09217b932aea32856 ./pool/main/n/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper-utils-1.9_1.50-1ubuntu1_i386.deb
dbf21241506cb04fc6f67a93aaaf991b ./pool/main/b/build-essential/build-essential_11.3ubuntu1_i386.deb
089772451f71f4a696a8c30118338d51 ./pool/main/b/bpalogin/bpalogin_2.0.2-11_i386.deb
bd566c9b29d13c9c0bbd71ba559678ab ./pool/main/b/b43-fwcutter/b43-fwcutter_011-1_i386.deb
7494f1aa7827a09451ae6cb12d6b7096 ./pool/main/d/dpkg/dpkg-dev_1.14.16.6ubuntu4_all.deb
60f1b7060ea77403d049e5516678e826 ./pool/main/g/glibc/libc6-dev_2.7-10ubuntu3_i386.deb
27333f45b45f635c29fa7570affbd887 ./pool/main/g/gcc-4.2/g++-4.2_4.2.3-2ubuntu7_i386.deb
428223c0b7f433038e7bd0f0359145aa ./pool/main/g/gcc-4.2/libstdc++6-4.2-dev_4.2.3-2ubuntu7_i386.deb
c8451ad994b190f2d278f61242ecbd75 ./pool/main/g/gcc-defaults/g++_4.2.3-1ubuntu6_i386.deb
b25719cb6478b097d55fad64cc73dd40 ./pool/main/m/mouseemu/mouseemu_0.15-8ubuntu3_i386.deb
e08504c477baefaaa39ba08811ccc12b ./pool/main/i/isdnutils/ipppd_3.12.20071127-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
eb3e623b83925dfeb9ebd2096ac7740f ./pool/main/i/isdnutils/capiutils_3.12.20071127-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
d1b95dae7c8d91cd306aa4364974706a ./pool/main/i/isdnutils/libcapi20-dev_3.12.20071127-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
6672c8daabc06068666bc0f6dc64701d ./pool/main/i/isdnutils/libcapi20-3_3.12.20071127-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
fe7fc75775679bcc235dbbb5e0515826 ./pool/main/i/isdnutils/pppdcapiplugin_3.12.20071127-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
2a48188c55d37ebb1adc1fd8e20ea054 ./pool/main/i/isdnutils/isdnutils-xtools_3.12.20071127-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
edce480ca7ee1e7866936049cb1bbc6a ./pool/main/i/isdnutils/isdnutils-base_3.12.20071127-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
4b7c7c763306a72b369a45d39fbe272b ./pool/main/f/fakeroot/fakeroot_1.9ubuntu1_i386.deb
e4a04b2f054b65169fd2c5a5e3cfa499 ./pool/main/p/pptp-linux/pptp-linux_1.7.0-2ubuntu2_i386.deb
7b6bf543b7ce805c931bc3e0a6b7ab5e ./pool/main/p/patch/patch_2.5.9-4_i386.deb
8a948ff8b58fa6fd2faf1c448aca99ed ./pool/main/o/oem-config/oem-config-gtk_1.37.2_i386.deb
ccaf63aff601bb5a91b20eba962fb75f ./pool/main/o/oem-config/oem-config_1.37.2_i386.deb
81f3469ce2479c9fa476fe4dd9995fd4 ./pool/main/l/linux-wlan-ng/linux-wlan-ng_0.2.8+svn1839+dfsg-2ubuntu4_i386.deb
cc40596f50c8da74bb24f91c47475c37 ./pool/main/l/linux-atm/libatm1_2.4.1-17.1build1_i386.deb
01fcd8a91cd31258cfcfee447b9c8d4d ./pool/main/l/localechooser/localechooser-data_1.42ubuntu5_all.deb
0393028e66eebb9ee9bd9f857269bcc8 ./pool/main/l/lupin/lupin-support_0.20_all.deb
b5039079d746a35204655001586b9b4c ./pool/main/l/linux/linux-libc-dev_2.6.24-19.34_i386.deb
e04cb7b27152cbb3cc3ad523b78da9d5 ./pool/main/t/timedate/libtimedate-perl_1.1600-9_all.deb
439013edf9427d7e9eba0926beffb14c ./pool/main/s/setserial/setserial_2.17-44_i386.deb
eacd21f5535cce0ea7f6d450352a4448 ./wubi.exe
0304327f9660fade211e199c533e189b ./README.diskdefines

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Johannes Pilkahn (j-pilkahn) said : 		#9

The .iso needs not be decompressed to burn.

Do you have Nero or the like installed under Windows? Anything that can burn images to a CD will work.

As for the MD5sum:

In Windows, there should be an app called md5sum.exe. In the "Run" dialog (Start menu) type cmd and hit Enter. Now type:

cd /path/to/folder/in/which/iso/is/located
hit Enter key.

then type:

md5sum imagename.iso

and compare the output with the value in md5sum.txt

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Jesús Eduardo (jesuseduardo7) said : 		#10

well, I didn't work, but when I burn the cd should I copy the .iso file directly to the disk?

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Johannes Pilkahn (j-pilkahn) said : 		#11

No.

The iso's content needs to be put on the disk. Most cd burning applications have an option along the lines of "Burn image to disc".

Also, burn at the slowest possible speed, to avoid write errors. Such errors can be compensated in an Audio CD, but not in a bootable OS install.

If the MD5 hash could not be checked, you might have to download md5sum.exe or some gui version. Check at http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/DOS/MD5progs.html for example.

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Jesús Eduardo (jesuseduardo7) said : 		#12

ok, thank you so much, could you tell me where can I find the program to check the MD5 please?

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Johannes Pilkahn (j-pilkahn) said : 		#13

You can find decent tools in the link I posted above.

http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/DOS/MD5progs.html

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Jesús Eduardo (jesuseduardo7) said : 		#14

ok, thanks, just in case, I can also check if the cd is ok when I start the live cd right?

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Jesús Eduardo (jesuseduardo7) said : 		#15

Thanks marcobra, that solved my question.

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Jesús Eduardo (jesuseduardo7) said : 		#16

Thanks Johannes Pilkahn, that solved my question.