Live CD not working

[Evan Leibovitch]

Tee Jay Rosene wrote:
> I have a quick question regarding my desktop PC: why won't the live CD 
> work?
> I'm trying to see how 6.10 will work on my machine, but when I put the 
> CD in the drive, the Ubuntu splash screen looks all weird (sort of 
> desaturated and blotchy) and then everything just freezes as soon as 
> the Ubuntu splash screen becomes "normal" looking. When I boot back 
> into XP, however, things are peachy (well, relatively peachy, 
> considering I'm running XP!)

Hello TJ,

I doubt the problem is in the graphics card. Until you actually start X 
Windows (which is well into the boot process) Linux uses fairly standard 
video modes.

While I don't have much experience with the live CD, I have noted that 
Ubuntu (and all current versions of Linux, for that matter) are having 
problems with some motherboards using the new Intel dual core 
processors. On Intel-brand boards at least, they've changed the chipset 
for the IDE driver which critically affects being able to boot from an 
IDE-attached CDROM.

What happens is that the CD will boot only as far as the BIOS will let 
it, and then freeze because the booted system can't access the CD drive.

There is a Linux driver for the new chipset (whose interface isn't 
called IDE anymore, it's "parallel ATA or PATA") but it's not included 
on any current Ubuntu release. The challenge is getting a working 
system, onto which you can download and install the new driver. For me 
the easiest solution has been to boot/install the system from a 
USB-connected CDROM drive (the BIOS of the new motherbords support this).

I'm not sure of this solves your problem, but I hope this can help 
reduce the grief of anyone else trying to install Linux on a new 
dual-core system. See https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/67012 
for more info.

- Evan


first you need a working system onto which you can down

> Anyhow, I have a feeling this might be because I have a pretty 
> high-tech ATI graphics card, an after market add-on.
> Is there a solution to this dilemma? Even more importantly, if there 
> is a solution, will said solution cause damage to the hardware?
> A caveat: this is even before installing Ubuntu on the system!
> Now I'm not at all flaming Ubuntu; I think it's great and I have 6.10 
> running on a couple of older PCs without a hitch.