I'm begining to hate LINUX...

[gabemcg]

So... this is copied from my post @ the Ubuntu forms, maybe someone here can help...

I am a noob here, but trust be, the wiki and google and threads have been pilliaged in search of a way to get breezy on this aincent laptop of mine...

here's my proccess

I got xp running on it via a net install...
so I thought I'd try that with breezy, I followed the tutorials as best I could, but was not succesfull...

Next, I tried shrinking the 4gb partition that windows is on, (leaving half the 4gb drive unformatted and ready for ubuntu.) and loading the install files from grub... I got the partition resized, and grub to show up in the boot menu, but it won't load (something about a hal.dll being missing)

No biggie, I figured... this thing has a USB port, and I have a Usb Dvd-rom, lets figure it out...

so this is where I'm at:

I downloaded a dusy boot disk, that has USB support for CD and DVD roms, I can boot off the floppy, and get a dos command prompt

I go to d:\ (the dvd-rom) and type, "dir" and I can see the contents of the Ubuntu install CD thats in the drive... I've done this with both the install cd and the live cd, and, no matter what I try, I can't get it to boot from either of the cd's...

I know I'm very close to getting this to work, so close I can taste it... but I'm hitting a wall, and would be greatly appreciative of any help that someone can offer. It's probably just a stupid command that I don't know what is, I'm sure someone here can help

thanks in advance!

Gabe



p.s. It's an intell (i386) pentium MMX 233mhz with 96mb of ram and 2mb video ram... I would like to (at least temporarily) keep the win xp install, just incase something goes horribly wrong with my linux attemts... If I can get everything I want to do to work with Ubuntu, then I don't have any problem ditching WinXP Pro...

thanks again!

any help??

 

[kamper]

I got the partition resized, and grub to show up in the boot menu, but it won't load (something about a hal.dll being missing)

That sounds a little odd. hal.dll is a windows thing. So you had windows booting fine, and then tried to install ubuntu but you're still using the windows boot loader? I don't think it deals with non-windows oses very well, grub should be the first thing up.

 

[Fish11]

kamper is right. I did a search and this is what I came up with...

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000490.htm



Would it help if you reinstalled hal or does the os have to be reinstalled instead?

http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?hal

 

[cleverhandle]

Sounds like you hosed the Windows partition when you resized it with the hal.dll error and all. I'd start by reinstalling XP and getting that right - you should be able to create a 4GB partition directly from the Windows installer. Just create that one partition and leave the rest of the drive as free space. Don't create more than one partition with the XP installer, because it sometimes does strange things with the partition table that Linux won't like.

After you've got XP installed and working properly from your 4GB partition, see if you can find some way to start the Ubuntu install from a floppy. I didn't see any floppy install images in a quick Google search, but one forum post pointed out the Smart BootManager - you should be able to get that running off a floppy, and then use it to pass the boot control off to the CD/DVD. Somewhat more involved than just using a straight set of floppy images or booting off the disc directly, but it should work. I assume you've already looked for a "boot from USB" option in your BIOS that would let you boot directly from the drive.

If that doesn't work, I think there are ways to copy the files to your drive and then do some magic to reboot the machine from DOS or Windows using LoadLin or some other program, but I'm not sure how that works and it sounds ugly. Or just use Debian - I know there are floppy install images out there that will get you into a network install.

 

[bersl2]

WTF? What did I think I was reading?

 

[gabemcg]

woah, woah, wait a sec...

The XP install is fine, boots fine... the Grub loader doesnt boot, and gives an error, the windows bootloader still loads fine...

I fixed the problem anyway with this nifty little install app called "instlux" from Here It had an option to auto configure the boot.ini file to enable boot from USB-CD, worked fine, installation is @ 79%

thanks for the replies tho!