I have an older Dell Latitude laptop that has Win2K on it. I'd like to remove that OS and install Ubuntu (I received the 2 free disks today) but when I put the Install disk in and restart the computer nothing happens. If I use the Live CD I can view and install the utilities but that disk will not help me with the OS installation. For some reason the computer is ignoring the Ubuntu installation. I tried to explore the CD to find an installation file but nothing was obvious to me. What can I do?
Thanks in advance.

i'm just guessing that you haven't changed the bios settings so that you
start from cd. you need to choose boot from cd and then restart your
computer with one of the cds in the computer.

do you mean that you can't boot using ubuntu installation CD?!
I'm not sure, but I think your installation CD is broken.
:roll:

Thanks ag2uki and Garda.
I put the installation CD in the drive, reboot the computer, the drive spins audibly but nothing appears on the screen and Win2K continues to load. I've gone to the setup page to "allow boot startup" but that adds nothing. I have no idea how to change the BIOS settings; could someone please help me with that if it is what I need to do.
Thanks.

during bootup a screen should come up with something like "press F# to enter setup" or something like that. Looks like it might be F2 on a dell.

Try rebooting the machine and holding the 'C' button while it starts up -- on many laptops this will override default boot priority and load the CD.

If you're intent on making it boot from the CD by default [or the above doesn't work] -- I know on my toshiba it's just 'Esc' when that goofy looking Toshiba logo appears on boot. If I remember right, Dell says something like "Press F2 for BIOS" or something. When you get there what you want to do is look for boot priority and change it to CDROM>HDD>FDD or something else where CDROM comes before HDD.


Lastly, I'm curious... you say you tried the LiveCD... did you boot from it? or just autorun it in win2k? because the live cd is a mini knoppix distro (Actually, it's debian, and knoppix is deb based... but I've come to regard a liveCD distro and knoppix to be synonymous.) What it should do (when used properly) is place you in a fully functional Linux environment to try out the features (and hardware support) of the respective distro.


Good luck getting it to work... I just screwed the MBR on two machines (which I didn't realize until I rebooted), one of which was ubuntu... apt rocks... now the trick is to salvage without re-formatting... we'll see.

I just finished reviewing the logon options. F8 (Advanced Options) < Enable Boot Logging < Select OS but the only choice is the Win2K. Again, the computer is ignoring the Ubuntu CD. Holding the C or ESC keys have no effect. This is crazy!

what you're describing sounds like the windows boot menu, this means that you're leaving
it too long before you're pressing buttons, because windows has already booted.

the very first screen just as you turn on the computer should have a line somewhere
saying something like

press "something" to enter cmos menu

on a dell i think that you need to press F2, on others it's the delete key, it could be others
on other bioses.

you need to keep pressing this untill you get to the bios menu, where you will have
to change the boot sequence to let the cd boot first.

Thanks Garda; you are correct in that it was a BIOS boot order problem and I solved it by changing the sequence of boot up; something I had never done before. I now have a beautiful Ubuntu Linux OS so now I need to figure how to connect to the internet since all my PCMCIA cards have Win drivers.
Fred