The situation ~ I spilled some booze on my laptop a few months ago, since then I have been working a USB mouse and keyboard. On Christmas day (yay!) my laptop died, made a funny noise then went to blue screen. When I try to reboot it says cannot find the required files and cannot find operating system (was Windows 7). I can 'try ubuntu' when booting from USB but when I try to fully install I am greeted with an error saying that it cannot create partitions. I have tried both installing by formatting the entire hard drive (500Gb) and installing ubuntu to take up the entire hard drive, and also by creating my own partitions in the sizes recommended by various folks on this here forum but the furthest I have got is a window asking me my time zone, the error appears then I have to start over or restart my laptop. When 'trying' ubuntu I can access the internet for about 2 hours then an error occurs and I have to restart (a lengthy process) in order to get back online. When in this state I cannot access the laptop HD. I bought the laptop in Korea so some sub menus within the guts of the machine are in hangul but I can navigate most of these. Please help.
2 Answers
Is it possible that your hard disk is fried? When you "Try Ubuntu" can you use disk-utility or testdisk to check if your hard disk is ok?
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when I am 'trying' the only thing I have been able to access is the usb stick I am trying from. ~ at work now will hunt for disk-utility or testdisk when home and have a poke about but do not think they are there... Jan 3, 2013 at 10:05
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@GraemeAnderson Most versions of ubuntu should come with
disk-utility, you should be able to installtestdiskif you can access the net. Jan 3, 2013 at 10:07 -
hmmm, where would I find disk-utility? I can access the net while 'trying' for about two hours then I am back to square one, not sure why this is... Jan 3, 2013 at 10:33
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alt-f2and typing justdiskshould get you the app, else in the old menus it used to be inAdministration. In the new UI you can probably just typediskin the unity dash. Jan 3, 2013 at 10:39 -
excellent, so from there how will I know if the HD is okay? when I try to install it detects that the HD is there. I create various sized partitions but they fail to install. Could this be I already have partitians created and it will not allow me to create more? Would formatting my HD from dos work or would that be a little drastic? (there is info on the HD I would like to save but have resigned myself to losing it anyway...) Jan 3, 2013 at 10:43
Your disk is probably FUBAR. Do you have USB3 port on that laptop and an USB3 external disk (or pendrive).
Try installing Ubuntu to the external drive, while removing the internal one.
If you still experience the error, there might be other components that failed.
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I have a couple of external hard drives at home. I am using an 8Gb USB to boot ubuntu from. I have no clue if they are USB3 or not, will investigate when I get home. Do you mean that I should set up the particians on my external HDD then install fully on there and try to gain access to my laptop HD from there? If I cannot access the HD from USB would an external disc be any different? Also since I am using an external mouse and external keyboard I am low on USB ports... Jan 3, 2013 at 10:12
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sorry, that USB3 thing misled you, of course USB2 is still ok, just slower. Jan 3, 2013 at 14:54
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I'm just suggesting that you entirely isolate the internal disk, even remove it. My personal experience is that even if you use Live CD, the internal disk is still accessed somehow (mine's temperature went up to 43 degrees). Jan 3, 2013 at 15:07