Where to go from the purple screen [duplicate]

Question

I am 100% new and have 0% experience with Ubuntu. I can safely say I don't know nor understand 90% of the things I've seen and done so far regarding this. I'm using a bootable USB stick to boot this. I'm on Windows 7, if that matters.

I managed to get to the purple screen where they show a keyboard in a circle being equivalent to a man. By pressing a button on my keyboard, it brought me to a language selection menu where I selected my preferred language (English). Now I am at a screen with "ubuntu; Persistent Mode; Live Mode; Install; File Integrity Check; Memory Test" and more buttons ranging from "F1 Help" to "F6 Other Options".

Now here comes the problem. I tried several times (by pressing Enter) on Persistent Mode, Live Mode and Install, and after a black screen with scrolling white things that are too fast to read, my screen turns black with a blue rectangle ticking around reading "Input Not Supported".

Sometimes when I get this screen, pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del reboots the computer, and sometimes it doesn't work and I have to force shutdown the computer by holding the On button.

Also: I tried looking for solutions online, and saw some stuff regarding graphics or something like that, and something about grub. No idea what any of those mean, hence I came here to type out. From all these you should be able to tell how illiterate I am on this matter.

[Another not-so-important problem] I have tried using this on my Asus Laptop (Windows 8), but apparently I had to do some stuff to be able to boot using USB. I managed to find the way to do it online, but after booting using the USB, it doesn't show anything and just starts the laptop like normal.

Answer 1

The problem where you said "a keyboard in a circle being equivalent to a man" occurs when "the BIOS is NOT set up to boot the CD [or USB] in EFI mode, or if the disk [or USB] is not 64-bit" (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI). If you have windows 7 64-bit, your BIOS should be in UEFI mode. That page I mentioned should help you with configuring the BIOS/checking it. First check if you have a 64-bit operating system by doing the following:

1. boot into windows
2. open the start menu
3. right-click on Computer
4. select Properties
5. look under the "System" heading in the window that opens and look at what follows "System type:"

If it says 64-bit Operating System, you should use a 64-bit version of Ubuntu, so make sure that the download says AMD64 (indicating 64-bit) somewhere in the file name.

(By the way GRUB is the boot loader that Ubuntu uses)