Hi, I have a shiny new Samsung N150. I installed Ubuntu on it this morning. It booted once, but will no longer boot.

And I really mean it won't boot, not even off the USB stick. I can get into the BIOS, but no further. Just a black screen and a flashing cursor in the upper left corner.

Apart from throwing it out the window and sending the bill to Ubuntu, is there anything I can do to get this thing booting? Even a fresh Windows install would be better than this.

Regards,
Simon

I wasn't going to respond because of your negative attitude.. but then I thought maybe you are just very angry at your situation.

Do you have a live cd available to check things out?

It *sounds like* your boot loader got trashed.

I suppose when you say it booted once.. what you meant was.. after the install, it went straight into Ubuntu.. so it never really 'booted' from the computer being turned off or restarted..

Did you verify that the specs of your sys and the version of Ubuntu you are using.. are in line?

Lettuce know..

Are you definitely 100% sure it doesn start to boot from USB? It is very significant to know whether it attempts to boot (from hard disk, USB or CD) or that it simply shows you that cursor in the upper left corner.

jlinkels

Thanks guys, and apologies for any offence caused by not conveying a positive attitude about my computer becoming inoperable. Some further info in reply to your questions.

I don't have a CD, but then the netbook doesn't have a CD drive. I could try to source a USB one, but if it won't boot from the USB key, I'm not sure if that would help?

It definitely booted once, from the hard drive, after a full restart.

The internet seems to think that the N150 and Ubuntu are usually very compatible. I checked that before purchase so was fairly optimistic about this.

It does not seem to try to boot anything, no matter what boot priority is set in the BIOS. Just the Samsung BIOS flashing up, F2 takes me into the BIOS, apart from that it's just that cursor, I'm afraid.

Check the bios options for booting from usb and try to boot it from a suitable usb image.

If it has a eth0 ... that is a boot option too

Thanks amani, I've tried the first of those ideas and the problem is exactly the same

It does have an ethernet port, but I'm not sure how to use it in this case. Could you elaborate on how I should go about making it boot from that?

How did you do the original installation? (eg from a USB stick)

Try booting the computer and--when it gets to the flashing cursor--do "ctrl-alt-F1" (or maybe F2 or F3), and see if you can get a terminal interface.

Quick important question/verification.. being a NetBook.. are you SURE you can install an os-- ON TOP of the original (sdd) drive??

It is possible, you did in fact 'brick' this machine.. at least temporarily-- if you are indeed not 'allowed' to install any other os on to it

Even if this is the case.. keep reporting back here on your progress.. because there may still be a way we can figure this out..

There's a page about installing Lubuntu on an N150, pages about installing Arch, Debian and Fedora on the similar N140 and I've installed Slackware 13.1 32-bit on an N150, installing to the original HDD (/dev/sda) so it definitely can be done.

@SimonH1234: how did you install ubuntu? From a USB memory stick? Are you still able to configure that as a bootable device in the BIOS (it has to be plugged in at the time). Can you boot that USB memory stick in another computer (is the memory stick itself still OK?)? Does the BIOS offer you an F4 RECOVERY option during boot? If you can get a USB CD/DVD drive then you can try booting from that -- which could give you a lot of options to work on the system if you booted the lies of Knoppix.