On Feb 13, 2008 1:08 PM, <<a href="mailto:murraymckee@wellsfargo.com">murraymckee@wellsfargo.com</a>> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
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<p><font face="Arial" size="2">OK, I've finally taken some time off and I'm trying to get Linux running on my old PC. </font>
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<p><font face="Arial" size="2">The install on what was the "D" drive got as far as trying to start the X server and failed to go any further.</font>
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<p><font face="Arial" size="2">I seem to have trashed something because to proceed any further I had to remove the old "D" drive from the boot sequence or it just hung at a black screen coming up. Something happened to my "C" drive as well as Windows no longer boots either.</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"></font></p></div></blockquote><div>Do you still want to boot from Windows occasionally? If so I would strongly suggest this gets worked out before you proceed. In my experience, if there's something wrong with the hard drive configuration you're not going to make any progress with a new operating system. Hard drive configuration problems can sometimes be undetected (or merely produce poor performance or reduced capacity) by Windows. Of course one way to work that out is to completely wipe out all remains of the old system but even then I've seen some odd problems occur.<br>
<br>Please tell us how your computer is configured... how many hard drives do you have (real, physical hard drives, not different partitions - typically there's just one but it can be split into a C and a D drive). Also it would be useful to know how much system RAM you have.<br>
<br>If you boot off of the Kubuntu CD you can open a terminal and run this command and gain some information:<br>sudo fdisk -l (that is a lower case L)<br><br>That lists your partitions. The list may look something like this:<br>
<blockquote style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote">Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes<br>255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders<br>
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes<br>Disk identifier: 0x0f5c0f5b<br><br> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System<br>/dev/sda1 * 1 3223 25888716 7 HPFS/NTFS<br>
/dev/sda3 3224 14593 91329525 5 Extended<br>/dev/sda5 3224 6360 25197889+ 83 Linux<br></blockquote><br>You'll really be most interested in the Device, Boot and System partitions of the bit at the end. The stuff at the top is of little interest unless the size it reports (in my example 120G) is very wrong.<br>
<br>In a typical dual-boot setup like mine, the first partition on the drive will be for Windows and there will be an asterisk in the Boot column indicating that the computer will try to boot the marked partition. Having no asterisk present for any of the partitions would certainly prevent you from booting.<br>
<br>We'd be able to help more if you told us what happens when you try to boot the computer into Windows (with the Kubuntu CD removed from the drive).<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div><p><font face="Arial" size="2">So I tried to install Kubuntu over what was installed on the former "D" drive. I chose the option to use the whole drive and reformat the partition table and 'loose everything on the drive'.</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial" size="2"></font></p></div></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div><p><font face="Arial" size="2">Then I got:</font>
<br><font face="Arial" size="2">Error: Kdesktop process for the file protocol died unexpectedly</font>
<br><font face="Arial" size="2">I clicked "OK" three times before it went away and stayed away.</font></p></div></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div><p><font face="Arial" size="2">And finally I'm getting</font>
<br><font face="Arial" size="2">Failed to create a file system - the ext3 file system creation in partition #1 of SCSI1 (0,1,0) (sdb)</font>
<br><font face="Arial" size="2"></font></p></div></blockquote></div>This is happening during Kubuntu installation? Or has Kubuntu said
that it successfully installed and this happens after the first reboot? <br>
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If you have the means to download the Ubuntu 7.10 CD and burn it I can help more since I've done the Ubuntu installation numerous times. I've never done a Kubuntu install. In theory they're not too much different so if you want to stick with Kubuntu it should work out OK.<br>
-- <br>Matthew Nuzum<br>newz2000 on freenode