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I have been trying to install Ubuntu 13.04 64bit onto my dell studio 1537. I downloaded the Iso, and burned it to a disk, and then I inserted the disk into the dell studio. I went into the boot menu and booted from disk... Afterwards all that showed up on the screen was the good old _ mark. Then the laptop continued to boot itself back into windows 7. I have been doing small bits of research and have found out that the dell studio 1537 should be able to run 64bit versions of OS's/ distributions. Any thoughts on what I could be doing wrong? Should I just try and boot the 32bit version instead? Idk? If anyone could help it would be much appreciated. I am a windows user and I want to get into using Linux so I am starting out with the desktop version until I can learn a little more.

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  • It sounds like a bad disc. Have you tried booting from USB?
    – Mitch
    Sep 4, 2013 at 20:26

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Is your computer capable of booting from DVD/CD drive? Most like it can. Is it configured to do so? Sometimes by default it does not. You may have to enable it.

Do a complete shutdown power off. Boot from no power. Some codes will show up listing memory and devices in ugly big text before you get into anything with graphics like the Windoos logo. Options will be usually listed on the bottom like < F2 > for System Rom or < F10 > Boot Manager or something similar. Be aware, some systems like Dell/Gateway/BigCompany install several boot up ROM utilities.

Sounds like you have some problems creating bootable media. If it was a 32/64bit problem, you would still be able to see a bootup from the installation media, and mostly likely a error message to that effect. I've gotten the boot manager message before on a USB stick and it's always been something I didn't do properly.

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  • The computer is capable of booting from DVD/CD Drive. I booted XP on it but couldn't find the required drivers I needed for that because dell only had Vista and more recent drivers. Currently it has 7 home premium 64 bit installed on it. But the thing about that is that I had forgotten I helped a few friends out with their computers and I put my 7 disk on theirs, and now there are no activation keys left. That is one of the several reasons I decided to jump into the Linux world.
    – Harold
    Sep 4, 2013 at 20:07
  • I am wondering if dells video cards could be the problem with the boot of the latest ubuntu 64 bit? When I boot from the disk it shows a _ mark and then it just goes straight through to windows 7. I can hear the system trying to read the disk but for some reason it seems to not be letting it read it. Thats why I was thinking maybe with the new video enhancements to the latest ubuntu it could have higher requirements than Windows7 would?
    – Harold
    Sep 4, 2013 at 20:13
  • I even tried booting from usb and it didn't work. When I tried booting from the usb it said bootmgr missing. So after that I put the 7 disk in and ran all of the boot solution commands I found online and this did not work either
    – Harold
    Sep 5, 2013 at 2:41
  • bootmgr missing is a message you typically get when you have not created a proper booting USB drive. Remeber to format your USB drive with the bootable flag and use a special USB boot creator. If you have Ubuntu on another system or a friends computer you can use the Startup Disk Creator to write your Ubuntu ISO file to USB drive. You can type in "Start" in Ubuntu's dashboard to search for the tool. Other operating systems have similar tools to specially create a bootable USB. You can't just copy the ISO or the files in it, to the USB drive. That won't boot.
    – BlushNine
    Sep 16, 2013 at 18:26

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