Uninstall-Reinstall as a FIX?

[whiteman]

I am having problems when I startup ubuntu. SOmetimes it goes fairly quick. SOmetimes I get pages of errors, Unable to read this or that USB. Then I may get a screen saying that I have no keyboard. So I turn computer off,back on, and I get the menu again, and it loads. When I m in Linux..I am able to use most of the things that are hooked into the belkin hub. My webcam will not access anywhere.(Creative. Also cant use Pixma Canon mp470. I cannot add shares with samba. When I attempt to login to my windows hardrive, it says "wrong password" Thats impossible. I have a feeling all of this is related in some way. I have a Ubuntu directory with uninstall.exe and a few other things. How hard would it be to uninstall-reinstall? How risky?

[techieMoe]

I'm assuming you installed Ubuntu using Wubi? If that's the case you should be able to uninstall/reinstall with very little risk. Ubuntu is being stored in one large directory on your harddrive without any special partitioning. The uninstaller will simply delete that directory, reset your boot.ini, and remove any registry entries.

[whiteman]

Welllll I used a disk image. I tried a few things. Im not sure really. All I kknow is Ive got that dir. You see first they let ya try that trial thing. Well I partitioned my HD. I had some grub ntldr probs for awhile. Just got them ironed out. Wasnt easy. I have definite partitions and a FULL version of linux. But it takes forever to load, and sometimes it hangs. But then its starts loading and I see the logo etc. But its no guarantee.

[techieMoe]

Welllll I used a disk image. I tried a few things. Im not sure really. All I kknow is Ive got that dir. You see first they let ya try that trial thing. Well I partitioned my HD. I had some grub ntldr probs for awhile. Just got them ironed out. Wasnt easy. I have definite partitions and a FULL version of linux. But it takes forever to load, and sometimes it hangs. But then its starts loading and I see the logo etc. But its no guarantee.

Could you post your hardware specs? Ubuntu shouldn't be giving you shoddy performance like that. If you want to start over and do a clean install of Ubuntu you can delete your existing Linux partitions using Disk Management in Windows. Just be very careful not to delete your NTFS (Windows) partition by accident. Leave the space unallocated and boot with the Ubuntu disc. Tell the installer to use existing free space, and you're good to go.

What version of Ubuntu are you using, by the way?

[whiteman]

I hit wrong link and unsubscribed myself. Yeah once its up, it seems OK. Y'know I tried to install Wine as well, but it didnt seem to know where to look? I did an instal of divx from the website, and and evrything except the player worked. It would not look on my c:\. The only way I could "draw" apps into he wine arena' was to cpy the folder onto my external, and then it was a 50/50 prop. Im at librry studying for ccna right now. And I think you are asking for more than I have but heres what I cn tellyou.
I have a Dell xps400. It has dual processor, 3 gig rAM. 120 g HD.
I have external HD(WD my book with 500)Id rather eave alone for now, I share it.
I share dsl from a dlink processor. My workgroup is also called dlink. Thats another thing. I dblclick on dlink..I can see my wifes machine and all her files. But mine just says printer$. Now it doesnt even say that. It asks for my password and then says its wrong. I think samba is messed up. I have three printers.all work except the canon. No driver available, so Im told. All printers are tied to my machine via a belkin hub.I think thats where some problems are as well. But after Im in ubuntu..evrything thats connected to hub works.
When I boot I get about 20 or 30 lines of "cannot read USB etcetc, error 110"
Then it stops, and I start geting all of my "oks" Loading samba etc.Ok OK. And all of a sudden the screen is pale..and there it is. I used to hear a sound, but no more. I have to manually config sound card after ea reboot. And updates....it says Im uptodate. When I do hardware check..everything works. But I have a feeling all is not well. I should have better connectivity. And my Macbook...It nevr sees that. When I get home Ill send you a better idea of my Ubuntu dir. You see first I tried to install from a flash. Didnt seem to work. Then I used cd. I hadnt cpied files correctly.(I know now) So then I tried install..from external. It wrked. At one pt I tried to reinstall over old, with disk. BAd idea. That gave me mbr probs.(I didnt finsh) I was worried when I didnt see my C: as a choice for formatting. It wanted to format my external! I am thinking of getting another HD just for Linux, but till then, I have windows stipped to bare essentials and plenty of room for Linux os. I use external for ALL SAVES.

I have given windows 59.3g and the remainder was to go to linux but Im not sure if it did. I had some problems with ntldr,(see my posts) I finally fixed myself, by copying ntldr andntdetect from a MS factory disk. I couldnt access grub or any cd drive, no matter what I did.

[MatthewGx]

whiteman, howdy! Looks like you have several issues here. I have 2 questions, and only 2, at this point. Please try to answer them as concise as possible. The more concise you are, the better we can assist you in this.

1) It sounds like you dual boot Windows. Do you have *any* signs of weirdness in Windows? It sounds like you may have a hardware issue...

2) We need to tackle one problem at a time. It looks like you're experiencing several problems. Which one do you want to tackle first? Once you decide on that, please be as concise as possible in your description of the error and please be as verbose as possible with any error messages you are getting.

Thanks!

[D-cat]

I was about to say the same thing.

When the only thing that's consistent is inconsistency (It doesn't always happen, or at least not the same way), and it affects different OS's even, hardware is suspect.

Unfortunately, something like this is hard to diagnose. Any number of things could cause this from a dying hard drive or a failing power supply to a cracked motherboard or just "popped caps," or maybe even just bad memory.

I'd test the memory first. It's simple, relatively quick, and lets us get that part out of the way. If that's bad, nothing else we do is going to help. You might have that option from grub boot up, if not, it's on the install CD.

[whiteman]

I Wouldnt have a problem there,but prior to my foray into linux land...Evrything ran fine. As much as I despise the MS peoples,9MY OTHER machine is a MAC) I MUST ADMIT that it loads fast, everything prnts, scans, copies etc. I think I just goofed things up when I tried to reinstall, and the existing install should have been removed first. This left me with a confusing bootloading situation. Am I supposed to have the ubuntu mbr file(forgot name) and ntldr in the root of c I have been doing some reading and they said something like the grub looks to boot from first partition, so if ya wanna use windows, )c you have to make sure its named as first? If I load win install disk....choose the disk recovery(or whatevr its called) And delete my partitions(everything except the windoze, then reboot...what will happen? Will I have to make sure I first get rid of the mbr file in root, what about ntldr and ntdetect?OR Since I hace a file called uninstall.exe in the ubuntu directry on external(FAT35) will it do what its supposed to? OR is that uninstall only for the pseudo-ubuntu..the trial version. I need to attack the partitions, but I dont wanna create a situation where I cant reboot. I was lucky last time since I was still able to repair linux(fsck) and make my moves and copies. I want to keep the ubuntu, but I dont wanna keep a sick version. I think Im not getting the full monty. I shouldnt have two pages of error messages before screen comes up. Or is this normal? I mean eventually all the stuff it mentions...works. Thanks guys.

[techieMoe]

If I load win install disk....choose the disk recovery(or whatevr its called) And delete my partitions(everything except the windoze, then reboot...what will happen? Will I have to make sure I first get rid of the mbr file in root, what about ntldr and ntdetect?

If all you're doing is trying to get XP to boot properly again, don't mess with your partitions at all. Go to the recovery console and run the utility FIXMBR. That's it. That will restore the default master boot record for Windows and everything should be fine.

You can delete the Linux partitions from inside of Windows using the Disk Mangement tool in Administrative Tools.

OR Since I hace a file called uninstall.exe in the ubuntu directry on external(FAT35) will it do what its supposed to? OR is that uninstall only for the pseudo-ubuntu..the trial version.

The uninstall.exe file in your C:\ubuntu\ directory will only uninstall the version of Ubuntu you installed using Wubi, not the dual-boot version you put on a separate partition. It's a good idea to go ahead and remove the Wubi version anyway if you're not using it.

I shouldnt have two pages of error messages before screen comes up. Or is this normal? I mean eventually all the stuff it mentions...works. Thanks guys.

No, that's not at all normal. Most of us are able to install Ubuntu on a variety of computers without pages of error messages. Something else is going on here. Perhaps I missed your answer, but did you ever tell us what version of Ubuntu you're trying to install?

[D-cat]

It's not uncommon to see issues when installing from an external drive (the Installer thinks that's the primary drive), but these are usually just boot issues that once resolved stay that way. Seeing two pages of errors is not normal. I would suggest loading a clean install from the live CD if that's possible on your machine. When you get to step4 (partitioning), choose manual partitioning, then edit your ext3 partition (probably sda2) and tell it to Use this drive, mount as "/", and select that partition to format (that'll make the installation clean). This way should also write "kosher" grub code in the MBR without killing your Windows install.

BTW: your Pixma printer should work through CUPS as long as you use the MP150 +gutenprint driver.