Error message in downloading Ubuntu 10.04

[Mad Penguin]

Don't know if this helps?
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromImgFiles
(I don't recall having to use a CD when doing this ..?)

[BobBullen]

Thanks but seems a bit tricky trying to find the img file. I think that's what I need......

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Before rushing out to buy an external USB CD/DVD, you need to go into your system BIOS and see if booting from USB is supported... I've been doing a bit of research on the 2200, and can't find a definitive answer.

Try this... plug your USB stick in before turning the laptop on, then enter the bios and see if it is available as a USB hard drive.

And make sure that you can return an external USB CD/DVD drive if it doesn't work.

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Even if it can boot from USB HDD and CD/DVD, it may not be able to boot from a USB pendrive... there is a program that can flip the removable media bit that marks it as memory rather than a HDD, but it doesn't work with ALL pendrives

http://www.getusb.info/flip-your-bit-usb-utility-to-make-local-drive/

This is a windows application.

[BobBullen]

Boot options in bios were 1,floppy 2, cd/dvd 3, hdd 4, network. No way, seamingly, to add usb. Anyway I bought an external cd/dvd drive and realised when I plugged it in that it was in the usb port ( I knew this but didn't realise it may prevent me from booting from it). Thankfully this wasn't an issue as it was recognised as a drive and booted. The booting stopped and I was quizzical. The s/w that came with the drive decided to attribute itself to .iso files, how kind. So I figured out how to remove this attribute and now need to download 9.10 again so I can try it. At this stage I have booted to the setup screen of 10.04 and 9.10 and it hangs when I take an option. Hopefully that's to do with the dodgy drive they were burned on. More news later...

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Were you a bit over eager with the system cleaning again... did you delete the Ubuntu iso AGAIN ... I take it as you get to a bootscreen that you aren't just burning the iso to a disk as a file, and are burning it as an image.

If the USB pendrive would have worked with your BIOS, it would probably have been listed as a hard drive, so there would have been somewhere to select which hard drive to boot from first... but unimportant now I suppose.

[BobBullen]

Here I am writing this from a fully installed copy of ubuntu 9.10. It seams the only problems really were to do with a dodgy drive and drive related s/w. I've now got 5 boot disks of 3 different versions that need formatting (or tieing to a string to scare birds from the veggies) not including the one that worked. I guess I'll be back again every time I can't do something I could do in windows.... Thanks a million for all the help!!!

p.s. How do you get any work done with connect 4 on your pc?

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Happy it worked out for you... Have fun with you shiny new Ubuntu, and keep an eye out for when the intel driver problem is sorted, as soon as it is, a simple:

Code: [Select]

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

will upgrade you to 10.04.

Were you using CDRW's... a lot of drives have problems with those... you should have used CDR's

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

To see the grub menu at boot time, you are going to have to either hit the Shift key, or edit the /etc/default/grub file and update grub.

to edit the /etc/default/grub file... Open a terminal and type:

Code: [Select]

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

Find the line that reads

GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0

and change it to

# GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0

save the file, and close gedit.

Now as long as you you are back at a $ prompt in terminal... type:

Code: [Select]

sudo update-grub

(if you are not back at a $ prompt... Close the terminal, and open another one... but closing gedit should return you to the $ prompt)

You won't have to press Shift now, and the Grub list will be shown for 10 seconds or until you select an OS to boot, whichever is the soonest.

[BobBullen]

Already has a hash  in front of that line.

Next line says


GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true

Should I hash out that line?

p.s. new keyboard config doesn't seem to do a hash. It's been turned to £. @ and " have been switched also. I actually prefer it this way as £ wasn't on the keyboard before. I'm sure there's a way to activate an ascii code. Do remember how that's done?

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Keyboard preferences to change from US to UK keyboard layout... System>Preferences>Keyboard, then select the Layouts tab.

Character map... Applications>Accesories>Character Map

You can also change keyboard shortcuts... System>Preferences>Keyboard Shortcuts

Don't change the
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
line.

I think we need to take a closer look at your grub.cfg... sudo update-grub threw up an error when we tried last night, and I noticed the UUID of the windows partition seemed very short... something has grub confused, and we need to work out what.

can you post the contents of your /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Code: [Select]

gedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg

and the output from these 2 commands (enter in a terminal)

Code: [Select]

ls /dev/disk/by-uuid

and

Code: [Select]

sudo fdisk -l

Question... did you delete the 8.04 partition before installing 9.10

[BobBullen]

I think it's actually booting up properly (thought I'd reported on this earlier). My laptop has taken to switching back to the laptop screen instead of the monitor when it reboots. Doesn't flick back to the monitor till later. If I manually switch it back to the monitor I get the grub screen. Trick is getting it at the right time. ubuntu installer activated a version of gparted which deleted everything extra it found and  created its own.

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

I think you will have to live with it then... It is possible to switch to the windows bootloader (instead of grub) and get Ubuntu listed in that, but I don't think this would fix the issue, and would be more trouble than it's worth.

A longer timeout for the grub screen might also help, but if you are still unable to do a sudo update-grub without an error, this would be impossible to do without fixing grub first.

[BobBullen]

Yeah you're right not worth messing round with too much now. Loading the mouse on startup can be a bit hit and miss, can't see where I can change that in ubuntu.

Big question tho. Any advice on using quickbooks on ubuntu? I've got my mail account onto evolution so if I can just get my accounts package to work my wife might buy in to the whole linux thing. I've loaded Wine but can't quite figure it out. It doesn't show the directories the quickbooks files are in and if I browse to find the files the "load with wine" option doesn't seem to do any thing and double clicking gives me errors - like it's expecting a zip file.

Thanks Bob.

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Probably a question for Mad Penguin (?), I think he used to use Quickbooks, but have no idea how he was doing it... VM or WINE, but one thing you can guarantee... It wouldn't have been on a Windows PC

If you have managed to get Quickbooks running in WINE... are your Quickbook files still on your Windows partition?... is the partition mounted? (if there is a hard drive icon on the desktop that takes you to the windows root... it IS mounted)... "load with WINE" will only work with windows executables, not data files.

Another option would be to output your data from Quickbooks as a CSV, and use a program like XL2QIF to convert it to QIF format then import it into GNUcash or homebank... don't ask me how much work this would entail, I've not tried it... It would have been nice if Quickbooks allowed exporting to QIF, but that's the "proprietary format" world for you.

GNUcash and/or homebank... Available from the synaptic package manager.

XL2QIF:
http://xl2qif.chez-alice.fr/xl2qif_en.php

GNUcash and homebank have no problem importing QIF or CSV, so you could try importing "directly" as a CSV.

Info, and links to other CSV  --> QIF converters here:'
http://geekych1ck.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/convert-csv-to-qif-when-your-bank-is-too-lazy-or-stingy-to-do-it-for-you/

One other thing... Can you can start a new topic for any new questions, so the title is specific to the question, this will make it easier for others to find an answer to a similar problem in the future... Thanks.