Problems with installation using dvd or usb drives

Peter Biancalana

4/12/24, 10:11 PM

I'm trying to install ubuntu on my laptop and everything I've tried has failed. I downloaded different versions of ubuntu and none of them have successfully installed. I created three different dvds, they boot up, go to the point where ubuntu is running on the PC. I click on the icon that says "Install ubuntu", it runs a little bit and then it says it encountered an error and stops. I created a couple of memory sticks, usb, and I used balena to download the install file on them. I set the laptop to boot from usb. It booted and ran ubuntu on the laptop, probably from ram, and I got the same thing; ubuntu runs on the laptop with the icon showing "Install ubuntu"; I click on the install ubuntu icon, it runs a while and then fails with an error. The errors never told me what the problem was. Now when I boot the laptop, I get a blank screen with the grub> prompt. I am not familiar with grub so I just reboot. I can still boot from the dvd but I can no longer boot from the usb. I've tried googling this problem but got nowhere. I'm hoping someone from the community can help me. I've never tried running ubuntu before so I'm really new at this. During one of the installs, I got to the screen that asks if I want to install ubuntu along with windows and I responded YES. during all my trials at installing ubuntu, my windows system has not been damaged and I can still run it.

So, what's the magic in installing ubuntu without problems? I hope someone out there is willing to help me. Thanks Pete

0 + 3

dvd

usb

system-installation

guiverc

4/12/24, 10:23 PM

You've provided no actual Ubuntu product & release details. Did you verify the ISO? or write of ISO to media? (*how you do the verification varies on release which you didn't specify*) Ubuntu releases up to 20.04 were perfectly suitable to be installed via optical media; but starting with 20.10 a self-validation of media was performed, which is slow on motor run devices & can have problems with *optical* media (esp. older hardware/drives/cpu) but flash media is expected for 20.10 & newer anyway. You didn't specify errors, but also didn't rule out procedural errors given what you mentioned.

guiverc

4/12/24, 10:31 PM

In my experience; *flash* media (USB thumb-drives) are *cheap* consumables and made to cost; ie. quality isn't great. With perfect procedures I find 3-8% of ISO writes to sandisk media can fail & needs re-write; but the failure % is higher with other brands. Its why validation is worth it (*its very cheap insurance*). You can also write ISOs in a way that makes booting easier on other devices, but the media will **not** boot on other media; ie. how its written really matters! Use *clone* if you want it operating best all the widest variety of devices (*only use reformat options if required*)

oldfred

4/13/24, 2:40 AM

What brand/model system? What video card/chip? Some need UEFI settings. Many need UEFI updates & SSD firmware updates.

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EN: Problems with installation using dvd or usb drives

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