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Boot problems?

Started by Gerdion , Jan 04 2009 08:00 PM

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#1
Gerdion

Posted 04 January 2009 - 08:00 PM

New Member

Member
1 posts

Recently, my girlfriend obtained this computer from her family and I am helping her clear it out and make it her own. Unfortunately, it is quite slow and has provided a few things which raised my eyebrows as I walked her through it.

Firstly, as it is booting up, it states that it cannot find the main drive, although after skipping past that message, it continues loading up and enters into XP.

Secondly, when I tried showing her Ubuntu with a LiveDVD, it didn't boot from the drive.

Is problem 2 related to problem 1? What can I do?

UPDATE:

I recently examined a possible solution presented on another site which said to check in the BIOS for the settings on the Primary drives 0 and 1. This has now left me even more confused, as the entry in Primary Drive 0 is correct and the entry in Primary Drive 1 says "Unknown device", while when the computer boots, it states that it cannot detect the primary HDD. What is going on here?

Edited by Gerdion, 05 January 2009 - 12:20 AM.

#2
happyrock

Posted 05 January 2009 - 09:23 AM

Tech Moderator

Retired Staff
9,285 posts

look in the bios and set the boot order to the cd drive first and the hard drive 2nd...save your settings ...
usually F10 but read the screen to be sure..
that should let Ubuntu load
what is the make and model of the computer...
it may have 2 hard drive controllers and if you do you can get the
message that it can't find the drive then it switches to the other controller and loads xp from that one...
the controller that doesn't have a hard drive connected to it can be disabled in the bios so that message will no longer appear..