Problems running Ubuntu from DVD...

[LegoFan560]

I'll try to keep this short because it's bedtime but I'm working on a computer I got from a friend who works on computers. It's an old Dell and the HDD is missing. I booted it to the BIOS (I think it's the bios- not sure what else it could be) and could run the setup utility, which is how I discovered it was missing the HDD. I created a Ubuntu boot disk on my normal computer to see what it could do. http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/ ... on-windows

I loaded it into the computer and pressed F12 to go to the boot menu. I booted from the CD-ROM Device (apparently it can play DVDs as well) and pressed F1 to continue. Then it showed a purple screen with what seems to be "keyboard = person" at the bottom. That stayed for a couple seconds, then it displayed "Ubuntu 13.10" with four dots below cycling from white to red (looks like a loading symbol). After a few minutes the background went black and the dots were white and yellow.

Then it showed some purple-ish stuff at the top of the screen and went blank. A cursor appeared and a grey screen with 8 grey horizontal bars at the top and a grey area for the rest of the area. A notice appeared saying "Space+super is now the default hotkey" and then a rounded triangle, a man in a blue circle, and a keyboard appeared in the middle of the grey lines on the right side. The grey area cycled to a red-orange gradient and the Install screen with options to Try and Install Ubuntu appeared.

I clicked to Try Ubuntu because there's no HDD and it's my understanding that installing an OS requires an HDD. The screen went black for a second, flashed to a bunch of grey columns, showed a line of text that started with RACE1something a couple times, and then a popup appeared saying "The system is running in low-graphics mode. Your screen, graphics card, and input device settings could not be detected correctly. You will need to configure these yourself." I clicked OK (the cursor worked fine and the Enter key worked as well) and got another popup: "What would you like to do?" with four options: "Run in low-graphics mode for just one session, Reconfigure graphics, Troubleshoot the error, and Exit to console login" with options to cancel and hit OK.

"Troubleshoot the error" gave me options to review the xserver log file, the startup errors, and to edit the configuration file. The startup errors were blank and the xserver log file was really long. There were some files missing but those were just warnings. The first error was "Failed to load module "fglrx" (module does not exist, 0)" and there were more but I don't want to type them all out.

"Reconfigure graphics" gave me an option to use the default configuration or to use my backed-up configuration. I'm pretty sure I don't have a backed-up configuration so I tried the default and hit ok but nothing happened.

So I ran in low-graphics mode. I figured "Exit to console login" was not going to be very helpful, but I have no idea what it means so IDK.

"Stand by one minute while the display restarts..." and I hit OK. Then it went to the grey columns I mentioned earlier and nothing happened for a long time. I left and came back and nothing had happened so I shut it down.


There you go! Do I need to get a HDD and then try installing? I found a 40GB one on Amazon for $22 if necessary. Or is there something else I should try?

Thanks!

[ccgr]

Sounds like the video card isn't detected or supported. Hard drive is not needed to boot from CD/USB. Try another live CD solution, I've had good luck with Fedora lately.

[LegoFan560]

I made a Fedora DVD and tried it. It booted fine and got through the loading bar (dark blue, light blue, white loading LtoR across the bottom of the screen) and initiated the firewall. Then it displayed a blank screen with a cursor (it moved just fine) and nothing else happened. The disk was still spinning and apparently being used (the usage light was flashing) but it wasn't doing it again. I held the power button to shut it down and tried again. I ran it in low-graphics mode or something like that but had the same problem.

I'm currently running the Fedora memory test. Here's what it shows on the left:
Pentium 4 (0.18) 1495 MHz
L1 Cache: 8K 11242MB/s
L2 Cache: 256K 9463 MB/s
L3 Cache: None
Memory: 511 540 MB/s
Chipset: Intel i845 (ECC: Disabled) / FSB: 99MHz

I'm wondering if the computer just can't handle Fedora or Ubuntu. Is that a possibility? Or could it be missing more than just the HDD?

[ccgr]

It still seems like the (onboard?) video card is not supported

[LegoFan560]

Is there a solution? Is there a way to confirm? Should I take a picture of the insides and post it?

No errors on the memory test.

[ccgr]

what is the computer model?

[LegoFan560]

Umm...

Dell Dimension 4300

Phoenix Rom Bios Plus Version 1.10 A02

Intel Pentium 4 1.5 GHz processor

That's what it says on the boot setup menu.

[ccgr]

try http://xubuntu.org/getxubuntu/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; I saw a forum thread saying a user got that to work...also you are using the 32bit one right?

[LegoFan560]

Yeah I'm using 32-bit. Well, I'm diong my best to. I'm pretty sure I am.

Xubuntu did the four loading dots and then a light-blue box with a red outline with text inside saying "Sync. Out of Range"