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We have an old Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop that had an OS/hard drive crash a year or so ago. Destroyed the hard drive and was going to send the laptop off for recycling but never did. 2 weeks ago I had the idea to buy a new/refurb'd hard drive and install Ubuntu so we could use the device for basic tasks. Bought/installed a refurbished 60 GB hard drive.

System specs: Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop w/ a Pentium M 1.60 GB/600 MHz processor, 1024 Level 2 cache, 1024 MB @ 333 MHz Memory, NVIDIA GeForceFX5200 Video Controller w/64 MB Video Memory. (OK, I know this is old stuff!)

Downloaded the lubuntu-16.04-desktop-i386.iso file and put that on a USB stick. Went into the boot menu and selected the USB drive for the new (blank) hard drive to boot from.

When I try to boot, I am getting the message:

An operating system wasn't found, Try disconnecting any drives that don't contain an operating system.

Press any key to restart.

Two questions:

  1. Did I select the the appropriate "flavor" of Ubuntu for this (older) machine, and if not - which version would work best?

  2. Please tell me what I'm doing wrong - and hopefully you can provide some (detailed) instructions on how to make this happen.

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  • This may be a silly question but... Did you make your USB stick bootable?
    – Zanna ♦
    Apr 30, 2016 at 4:21
  • Can u specify how did u make the bootable usb
    – Mohit Rajan
    Apr 30, 2016 at 4:31
  • @Mohit: It was NOT a silly, question, because silly me didn't realize I needed to! After seeing your question, I did some research and made it bootable, but at the same time it was formatting the stick I was also burning the .iso to a DVD. Wound up using the DVD before even trying the usb stick.
    – Paul D350
    May 1, 2016 at 4:17
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    – David Foerster
    Nov 26, 2016 at 10:46

2 Answers 2

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I would try using a bootable cd instead of the usb. Often times the bootable usb won't get made correctly (usually due to incorrect settings by the software you used to make the bootable usb) and because of that you will not be able to boot from it. This would make a lot of sense because 16.04 is still new.

So if you can, try using a bootable cd. Then, try Ubuntu before you install it. Make sure all your devices work with it using the live cd. If they do, then you know your hardware is compatible and it should be safe to install it.

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  • I followed your instructions and downloaded 7-Zip to unzip the .iso. I then burned it to a DVD and did a brief "test run" which seemed to work OK. I then began the installation a few minutes ago. As I was typing this response the installer just crashed.
    – Paul D350
    May 1, 2016 at 4:03
  • Did it give you any error messages? At what part of the installation did it crash?
    – Andrew
    May 1, 2016 at 7:55
  • The error message said: "The system log from your installation contains an error. The specific error commonly occurs when there is an issue with the media from which you were installing. Please try creating the USB stick you were installing from again or try installing from a different USB stick." (I was installing from a DVD?) I then re-ran the install using the same DVD that had failed the 1st time, and the second time it worked! Everything seems to be working OK, but it's very slow. Thoughts on how to speed how to speed it up? I can double RAM from 1GB to 2GB (max) on this pc.
    – Paul D350
    May 1, 2016 at 15:13
  • The machine you are using is pretty old. I wouldn't wast any time or money upgrading anything. If you were to disable the GUI that would free up a lot of ram and make it run much quicker, but it sounds like you are using this as an every day computer so this probably is not an option. If I were you I would start saving up money for some new computer parts. You can save a lot of money building your own computer and its a good learning experience.
    – Andrew
    May 2, 2016 at 0:14
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If your USB was made bootable and this is still occurring, check your BIOS settings to make sure the USB is set as a bootable device.

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