Bootable ISO Disk doesn't work on Acer 1362 laptop

Question

I have a 9-y/o Acer 1362LCi laptop that I want to convert to a Linux machine,since it is no longer useful as a windows machine.

i made an iso dvd that is bootable from a win7 desktop, but it hangs on the Acer laptop trying to read the iso disk and will not boot.

Using burned Ubuntu 14.04-desktop-i286 distro, and Hashes are good.

Acer has 2gb ram, is pre-loaded with xp, has sp3. Acer

BIOS will not recognize thumb drive, so cannot try that method, though another question was asked on this forum which states they were able to use the usb drive. Lubuntu 12.04 on Acer laptop boots to blank blue screen . I am waiting for a response from this post.

I was successful booting from the xp sys boot disk, and Norton Partition Magic disk.

I was under the impression that Ubuntu would first boot and then analyze the disk to determine if it was capable of being loaded onto the hd, and then ask if you want to create partitions or format. Am I wrong in this assumption?

I have not wanted to reformat the HD and then try loading ubuntu iso, though this may be my last resort.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

OK first things first is you need to create a system image of your Windows drive. If you aren't ready to simply format it you likely have things you still want to keep. What are the specs of the cpu, 9 years old puts it into pentium 4 ish days. The default Ubuntu install requires a fairly capable graphics card to even boot, and bearing in mind your laptop is 9 years old I don't think it is feasible. Can you try Ubuntu 12.04 alternative install? Thus includes a text based installer (still reasonably simple to use) which ensures that it will most likely boot. I would suggest you start there as that's probably the best chance you have got. If it doesn't boot via the alternative cd above then you will likely have to try another lightweight distro (crunchbang is quite lightweight). You mention that the DVD you burnt is Bootable on a Windows 7 machine. Then on that case the DVD works.

Does your laptop even support booting from a cd/DVD? Have you tried creating a Linux live USB stick using something like Linux love USB creator and booting from it?