What Now???

[aztech4mac]

I have an hp 4530s which I've been trying to setup as triple boot. I had ML and Win7 installed and working. I can't seem to install ubuntu correctly. After six attempts I have trashed my Windows partition and the boot block so I can't update anything. The install seems to trash the partition I'm installing to and the swap partition. I now have over a dozen partitions on the drive that ubuntu has created, several that are 0mb and others that are now unusable. In short my drive is hosed!

I know I will have to reformat and start all over. As you all know, this is not a short process, and frankly I don't have the time to dance around this merry-go-round several more times to get this working, is ever. This whole experience is not what I had expected, and I'm afraid after another failure round, I will just install Windows 7 back on the bastard and get on with my life. I expected this to take a day, I'm now a week into this and I've got nothing...

Can someone explain why Ubuntu trashed my drive. I've installed Ubuntu on several stand alone drives and never had a problem. I expected Ubuntu to be the easiest of the three to install and setup. Instead it has trashed what I had. I'm thinking of installing Ubuntu first, so I don't loose my other installs. Is that a good idea? I'm about ready to take this POS to the shooting range...

 

[RehabMan]

I have an hp 4530s which I've been trying to setup as triple boot. I had ML and Win7 installed and working. I can't seem to install ubuntu correctly. After six attempts I have trashed my Windows partition and the boot block so I can't update anything. The install seems to trash the partition I'm installing to and the swap partition. I now have over a dozen partitions on the drive that ubuntu has created, several that are 0mb and others that are now unusable. In short my drive is hosed!

I know I will have to reformat and start all over. As you all know, this is not a short process, and frankly I don't have the time to dance around this merry-go-round several more times to get this working, is ever. This whole experience is not what I had expected, and I'm afraid after another failure round, I will just install Windows 7 back on the bastard and get on with my life. I expected this to take a day, I'm now a week into this and I've got nothing...

Can someone explain why Ubuntu trashed my drive. I've installed Ubuntu on several stand alone drives and never had a problem. I expected Ubuntu to be the easiest of the three to install and setup. Instead it has trashed what I had. I'm thinking of installing Ubuntu first, so I don't loose my other installs. Is that a good idea? I'm about ready to take this POS to the shooting range...

Are you following my guide for installing Ubuntu carefully? See my blog (see link in signature). It is very easy to screw up the Ubuntu install to where it won't work with Chimera, and if you are doing it properly, you will have already setup your partitions for Ubuntu before you installed any OS. Check it out...

BTW, it took me over a week to determine how to triple-boot... lot's of failed attempts. Probably another week to understand why it finally worked, and another week to write up the procedure, test it, and publish it.

 

[aztech4mac]

Are you following my guide for installing Ubuntu carefully? See my blog (see link in signature). It is very easy to screw up the Ubuntu install to where it won't work with Chimera, and if you are doing it properly, you will have already setup your partitions for Ubuntu before you installed any OS. Check it out...

No and Yes! I did, except I used 4 partitions because I'm doing a triple boot, so I eliminated the Win 8 partition. I could not run all the terminal stuff in Ubuntu. I kept getting no such file errors. My first attempt to install, I kept getting a go to the partition menu and select a boot load...yada, yada I could not find a partition menu. I started trying other stuff and I have no idea what I actually set before it allowed an install. Things were toast from then on. Further tinkering and reinstalls just made things worse. I kept going, thinking if I find the proper procedure, I'll be able to replicate after a reformat.

BTW, it took me over a week to determine how to triple-boot... lot's of failed attempts. Probably another week to understand why it finally worked, and another week to write up the procedure, test it, and publish it.

All I can say is you must love abuse. I lack the knowledge, patients, talent, determination, and time for this. I thought this would be a fun project. And I guess it is, if you define fun as a root canal without anesthesia while simultaneously getting a colonoscopy. Yep, that's fun...

So far, it get worse. I reformatted the drive, repartitioned it, decided as long as I was there I'd install ML, HP installer, and Chimera. Everything seemed to go ok, but a restart loads Chimera, then does it's press any key timeout and starts to load ML (I get the grey screen with the apple logo) then shuts down restarts and goes into this endless loop. If I manually select the ML partition it does the same thing.

I've reformatted again and I'm in the process of reinstalling ML. Oops, ML just finished and... would not load. Froze at the grey screen just before the cursor appears. I think I've damaged this drive somehow but I can't see how that could be.

I honestly don't know how you deal with this. Each hour I spend takes me farther back to step 1 and now I'm just repeating step 1 with no success. There isn't much left in me for this...

 

[RehabMan]

No and Yes! I did, except I used 4 partitions because I'm doing a triple boot, so I eliminated the Win 8 partition. I could not run all the terminal stuff in Ubuntu. I kept getting no such file errors. My first attempt to install, I kept getting a go to the partition menu and select a boot load...yada, yada I could not find a partition menu. I started trying other stuff and I have no idea what I actually set before it allowed an install. Things were toast from then on. Further tinkering and reinstalls just made things worse. I kept going, thinking if I find the proper procedure, I'll be able to replicate after a reformat.



All I can say is you must love abuse. I lack the knowledge, patients, talent, determination, and time for this. I thought this would be a fun project. And I guess it is, if you define fun as a root canal without anesthesia while simultaneously getting a colonoscopy. Yep, that's fun...

So far, it get worse. I reformatted the drive, repartitioned it, decided as long as I was there I'd install ML, HP installer, and Chimera. Everything seemed to go ok, but a restart loads Chimera, then does it's press any key timeout and starts to load ML (I get the grey screen with the apple logo) then shuts down restarts and goes into this endless loop. If I manually select the ML partition it does the same thing.

I've reformatted again and I'm in the process of reinstalling ML. Oops, ML just finished and... would not load. Froze at the grey screen just before the cursor appears. I think I've damaged this drive somehow but I can't see how that could be.

I honestly don't know how you deal with this. Each hour I spend takes me farther back to step 1 and now I'm just repeating step 1 with no success. There isn't much left in me for this...

Probably it is best to ask questions if you have problems in a certain area. And make sure that you are following the instructions to the letter as much as possible. Each time you do something "different" without really knowing what you're doing, you're risking failure.

For me it is no big deal to figure out this stuff... after all I dealt with computers for a living at one point. I find the challenge of learning how things work, even if it is through trial and error, as interesting and fun.

And if you haven't been printing the instructions (both the blog and the ML install guide) so you have them handy while going through the steps, definitely do so. It is too easy to forget some important point if you are following on screen or by memory. Make check marks as you complete each step so you always know where you are. Read each step just before attempting to complete it, don't assume you remember what it is. Don't go too fast, and always double and/or triple check your work as you go.

And if it helps, install the same version of Ubuntu that I did (12.04LTS). It could be that things are changing in the install with some of the later versions (although I installed 12.10 on my desktop without issue... it is not as stable as 12.04LTS).

 

[aztech4mac]

Thanks again for all your help,

I wedge this project in between paying projects. I have a deadline this week for one and two next week. I'm in the panic mode as deadlines approach. I was able to reinstall everything back to where I was before the Ubuntu install. I had trouble updating ML but finely got it. Until I get my calendar cleared of deadlines I'm stalled on this.

I will be back and I'll have questions I'm sure. I do want to get this finished and I need to get the wireless working too.

Best,

 

[aztech4mac]

I'm no longer in panic deadline mode and all projects went out on time. So I had time to resume my triple boot quest.

I decided to start fresh with newly reformatted and partitioned drive. I had a Seagate Momentus 500Gb in an external case and decided to swap out the OEM drive for it. I was hoping I'd see some booting improvement due to the small SSD, but I haven't seen any noticeable improvements in boot times for OSX, Win7, or Ubuntu.

Meticulously, following rehabmans' guide is the trick. While I did deviate from the complete guide, my changes we that I did not prep for or install Win 8 and I used a CD install of Ubuntu instead of a flash drive. Other than that I followed the guide and everything worked the first time and without a hitch.

I had to swap out the wi-fi card which also went well the second time. Get your card from HP!

So my little project is complete for now. I'd like to thank rehabman for all his help and the work on this site, along with the others who have contributed here too.