isolinux:Disk Error, Sony Vaio

[Jtgarn]

Hey guys, I'm just getting back into Linux after a run back in high school. Spent several years away from the IT world, and I'm coming back to it. Naturally, something with Linux would mess up my wonderful world! So here's my deal...

I have a Sony Vaio VPCCW17FX with 64 bit Windows 7 on it. Well I tried to do a dual partition since I have like 300 gigs of memory. From the start this is what I did...


I went on Windows 7 partition manager program, and set up 100GB of free space unformatted. I downloaded the Ubuntu 10.04 live disk, and tried to do an install. I managed to get the install down and used it's partition manager on install to make that free space ext4. The install went smoothly after I tweaked it with "nomodset", and after the install I restarted my computer into the log in.

I made it into Grub fine, and selected the Ubuntu login. The second I did that, it went into it making my screen go black. At the time I didn't understand what was happening (The nVIDIA G210 compatibility issue), and got frustrated with a black screen and was unable to fix it.

So I said to hell with Ubuntu, and restarted into Windows 7. I couldn't figure out how to fix it and got frustrated and went into my partition manager and deleted Linux out of the partition. Grub had overwritten my MBR and I had to run my Windows 7 System Recovery disk to fix my MBR.

Anyhow, I regained my faith in my abilities to accomplish this and after some more research I decided to give it another go. Well I decided to use Mint instead of plain Ubuntu this time. When I put it in I get past the initial menu to start the install, then I get this message...


Loading isolinux: Disk erro 01, AX = 4205, drive EF

Boot failed: press a key to retry

I tried the reburning the iso on another disk, and I get the same results. From what I found online, some people are saying it has to do with the wiring of the drives or something, but nothing has changed, and the drive seems to be working fine with my Recovery Disk.Also the disk loadsfine if I stick it in while Windows 7 is running.

Since this is a laptop, I can't really take it apart. I reset the BIOS, I did a full restart of my MBR with my recovery disk, and I tried using a different type of CD with a fresh burn onto an ISO. What else can I try? I'm really wanting to get back into Linux, but I'm out of ideas.

I'm about to give a different distro a try, but I don't know if this will happen with another distro or not. Thanks for the help guys and girls!

[hatebreed]

first off welcome back to linux, I know it can be frustating cause I have issues as well. Have you tried the ubuntu disc again, since you know that it has worked in the past? You could have a bad download of the linux mint iso and that's why you are getting an error. That would be the first step I would try. Good luck and post results.