Kubuntu 10 fails boot from hard drive.

[Newoldie]

I have an old PC with two hard drives (40 and 60Gb) and it uses dual IGhz pIII processors.It shares screen,mouse and keyboard with another PC.Both into Netgear modem.
It ran ubuntu 8.04 and XP Pro on the drives above with no problems.
Then I decided to try Mint 11 (34bit CD) - result after Grub blank screen other than flashing cursor at top left.No input from keyboard.
Tried Mint KDE 10 (34bit DVD) same result.
Tried Kubuntu 10 (CD) same result.
Reinstalled Ubuntu 8.04 no problem.
Upgraded via download from 8.04 to 10LTS hoping that this would somehow prevent the problem and have screen which says:-

starting up
[000000] ACPI no DMI BIOS year,ACPI =force is required to enable acpi
mount: mounting none on /dev failed: No such device
udevd[825]: error getting socket: Invalid argument
error initialising netlink socket
udevd[825] error initialising netlink socket
libudev: udev_monitor_new_from_netlink:error getting socket:Invalid argument
Segmentation fault
Gave up waiting for root device.Common problems:
Boot args (cat/proc/cmmdline)
Check root delay (Did the system wait long enough)
Check root (did the sytem wait for the right device)
Missing modules (cat/proc/modules; 1s /dev)
ALERT! dev/disc/by-uuid/"long number here" does not exist.Dropping to a shell.

Then it goes into Busybox and ends with "initramfs"
I have tried altering the boot device in BIOS from HDD0 through 3 with the same result other than more bad language!

Can anyone help this ageing newbie?

[yancek]

How much RAM does the computer have?

Then I decided to try Mint 11 (34bit CD) - result after Grub blank screen other than flashing cursor at top left

Is this what happens after trying to install Linux Mint?
What's the status now? You had Ubuntu 8.04 and tried to upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04? That's not likely to work well, you need to go from release to release and not skip releases.

ALERT! dev/disc/by-uuid/"long number here" does not exist.Dropping to a shell.

UUID has changed. It is looking for a UUID for a partition which does not appear to exist. Use one of your Live CDs and run: sudo blkid
or
ls /dev/disk/bu-uuid
and post the results.

[Newoldie]

768MB ram

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo blkid
/dev/hde1: UUID="3878619F78615C9E" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/hde5: UUID="0024DBD124DBC834" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/hdf1: UUID="d37ea171-8d8c-4d08-9d77-887235c8c88a" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/hdf5: TYPE="swap" UUID="850cb90e-bb9d-4b16-abd6-2b84042d0a5d"
/dev/loop0: TYPE="squashfs"
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

[yancek]

You didn't answer my questions from my last post. Also, the output of blkid is only useful to you as you are the only one who has seen whatever this number is "ALERT! dev/disc/by-uuid/"long number here".

Your post title indicates problems installing Kubuntu but the info in your original post refers at the end to your attempt to upgrade Ubuntu, apparently skipping several releases. This almost always causes problems.

So clarify your current situation.

[Newoldie]

Current situation:60GB hard drive with XP Pro that works;40GB hard drive with Ubuntu 10 that gives output as in my first post.
Output of blkid at /dev/hdf1: UUID= matches that not typed in my first post as its so long.

Fresh install of Ubuntu 8LTS to the 40GB drive works.Fresh installs of Mint11,Kubuntu 10 failed to boot.

[yancek]

Which drive is set to first boot priority?
Are you booting xp and Ubuntu from Grub bootloader?
Which drive did you install Kubuntu and Mint to?
When you installed Ubuntu 10(?) where did you install the bootloader?
It's difficult to boot Grub2 (Ubuntu 10) from Grub Legacy (Ubuntu 8.04).
Your blkid output shows hde and hdf drives which normally would be the fifth and sixth drives. How many drives do you have?

Boot Ubuntu and run this command to get partition information:

sudo fdsik -l (lower case Letter L in the command)

Post info.

[Newoldie]

Which drive is set to first boot priority?
Are you booting xp and Ubuntu from Grub bootloader?
Which drive did you install Kubuntu and Mint to?
When you installed Ubuntu 10(?) where did you install the bootloader?
It's difficult to boot Grub2 (Ubuntu 10) from Grub Legacy (Ubuntu 8.04).
Your blkid output shows hde and hdf drives which normally would be the fifth and sixth drives. How many drives do you have?

Boot Ubuntu and run this command to get partition information:

sudo fdsik -l (lower case Letter L in the command)

Post info.

60GB drive is set to master if that is what you mean?
Yes booting xp and ubuntu from grub
Mint and Kubuntu to 40GB drive
Bootloader not configured by me.I just let the installer do whatever it wanted.
Full drive list:Floppy;DVD reader;CD reader;60GB hard;40GB hard.
fdisk as below
Disk /dev/sdb: 40.1 GB, 40060403712 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4870 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00096982

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 4665 37471581 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 4666 4870 1646662+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 4666 4870 1646631 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sda: 60.1 GB, 60060155904 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7301 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xebf7ebf7

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 4910 39439543+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 4911 7300 19197675 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 4911 7299 19189611 7 HPFS/NTFS

[yancek]

Your fdisk output shows two hard drives, one (60GB) with two windows partitions and another (40GB) with two Linux partitions. That indicates only one Linux installation so I don't know where your Mint and Kubuntu installations are? Do you have other drives?

[Newoldie]

There should only be one Linux installation.
Ubuntu 10LTS.
I am not trying to install all of the varieties mentioned just trying to get a version that is newer than my original Ubuntu 8LTS to work and to see if a different style, like Mint, suits me.
I have only ever tried to install one Linux at a time as a fresh install on the 40GB hard drive overwriting whatever was on that drive.
So the history of the 40GB drive is:
Ubuntu 8LTS from way back - overwritten by fresh install of Mint11 - failed boot.
Mint 11 overwritten by fresh install of MintKDE10 - failed boot
MintKDE10 overwritten by fresh install of Kubuntu10 - failed boot
MintKDE10 overwritten by fresh install of Ubuntu 8LTS from old CD - booted no problem - upgraded this to Ubuntu 10LTS as offered by the upgrade package download screen and its back to no boot with the screen output quoted in my first post.

Thanks for sticking with me on this.

[yancek]

Given the apparent age of the computer, Ubuntu 8.04 is probably as good as it will get on your hardware. The newer versions of Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Mint are not likely to work unless you use a different Desktop. The distributions you have tried are not meant to work on older hardware.