Bootable DVD/RW won't store documents

You cannot store documents on a DVD/RW in this manner. If you want to do this, use a liveUSB, as documented here:

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/usb

Also, there is more info here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick

The problems are that in order to modify a CD/dvd, you would need to disable the CD/dvd before being able to write to it, but to run the burning program, you would need to read the contents of that program from the CD/dvd, or dump it into ram. Its theoretically possible to do, but could go wrong in many many ways.

Also, if you find yourself using ubuntu a lot, you may just want to install it to your hard drive. LiveCD/USB/DVD sessions are meant for "test driving".

mycae, thank you for your help but it didn't work (won't boot from pendrive).
It's a SanDisk so I ran lauchpadremoval.exe but it didn't recognize the flash drive
I also ran Universal-USB-Installer-1.8.7.8.exe to load ubuntu-11.10-desktip-i386.iso
...so what can I do now?

I'd check your boot order in your bios, to ensure that USB boot is higher priority than hard drive boot.

For my boot order I can choose three of the following (I chose the ones marked with #):
Floppy
LS120
3) Hard drive
1) CDROM
ZIP100
USB-FDD
2) USB-ZIP
USB-CDROM
LAN

...things have gotten worse. I thought it was the flash drive so I tried to re-do it (rebuild or what ever) and now when I run
Universal_UBS-Installer-1.8.7.8.exe I get the following message:

An error(1) occurred while executing syslinux.
Your USB drive won't be bootable...

Try using Unetbootin to make a bootable USB. I've always had good luck with it. You'll need to set the "persistence" of the USB stick to maximum. The persistence is actually the amount of space allocated to the bootable device for saving information to.
An alternative is to use an 8GB USB stick (or bigger) and do a full install to the USB stick. This boots quite slowly but is usually usable once it's up and running. I'd actually prefer this method if I had a machine with no hard drive that I wanted to use since it's most like using a proper install.

Some BIOS's can be a little difficult to understand when it comes to setting them up to boot off USB. I have one machine with an Award BIOS that caused me lots of hair pulling before I figured it out.

Firstly, The USB device must be inserted before the machine runs it's BIOS tests. If it doesn't get recognised at first then resetting will normally fix it (USB does not get powered off).

Secondly, there's often a keypress (like <Esc> or <F12> that will cause it to go to a boot menu however this often has to be enabled in BIOS otherwise you don't get the message (eg "press xx for boot menu")

If that doesn't work for your BIOS, have a look to see if there's actually two boot configuration items: a "first boot device" and a "boot device priority" I've found that the "boot device priority" overides the "first boot device" on this BIOS. When you go into "boot device priority" you may see the USB stick listed in clear, and it's just a matter of moving it to the top of the list.

All of this gets confusing if the BIOS hasn't recognised the USB stick and doesn't show it. As mentioned, press the reset button and try it again.

Chris

Chris, many thanks for your help. You are 100% correct. The USB stick was made bootable but as you indicated, the boot order wasn't set correctly.

FYI: when I booted from the USB stick into a 64bit laptop I was able to get the wireless connection to work (it only asked for the Network name) but was not able to get the wireless connection to work on a 32bit laptop (it asked more questions that I didn't know how to answer)

FYI: on the 32bit laptop, the system (after installing the "Additional Drive (Broadcom)" would freeze within 10 minutes or so but seemed to be fine after uninstalling the "Addition Driver (Broadcom)"

I'm new at this so I don't know how to classify this problem - the original problem is solved by now I have a new problem - getting the wireless connection to work on the 32bit laptop

I don't have a broadcom card and the issue is complicated enough that it needs someone familiar with the problems involved to help you. It would be best to start new thread for this to have the best chance of attracting someone knowledgeable on this. I think there's a b43 driver for the broadcom, but that either it or the default driver must be blacklisted so that it doesn't cause conflicts.

Maybe just start a thread "Broadcom driver causes system lockup" and see how you go. The 32/64 bit issue is strange.

BTW if you can connect to your wireless network just by typing the name of the local network it may mean that you have no security on it. This would mean that anyone could use your network just by attaching to it. It's best to use a secure network: either WEP or preferably WPA2 so that a decent password is needed to connect. This requires configuration in your modem/router.

Chris

Chris, thank you, and yes my router has no security presently. I wanted to get everything working before dealing with security on it. But thanks for the tip because I can't forget security on the router.