I am a student in CIT and have an older computer that I am messing around on. My plan is to reformat the HD then load Ubuntu on it. The computer had Windows 98 on it before. So during the start up i pushed F8 and not to the screen on what mode you wanted to go into. I made my way to formatting the primary partician. It went through the steps of asking me if this was ok because it was going to wipe everything on there. I wiped it and then tried setup.exe I am guessing that did not do anythig because I am trying to load ubuntu on it not windows. So i ended up shutting the computer off then starting it back up. i have the cd in for it to boot, but it keeps saying Invalid System disk, re insert and press any key. This computer cost me nothing so i do not care if I had messed up. This was all to learn, but does anyone know what i can do to fix it or if it was my fault. Is it possible that the DVD I burned is bad or not being read?

Also I am thinking either this may be caused by using a DVD not a CD. Or that it is set to boot from the floppy drive.

If the computer came with Windows 98, it may be unable to boot from a CD. You will have to check the BIOS to see if the CD drive is included in the list of boot devices. If it is, make the CD the first boot device, the floppy drive the second boot device, and the Hard Drive the third boot device (you can omit the floppy drive in the boot order if you have no need for it). If the CD is not listed in the boot device list, you may be able to make a Linux boot disk to start the CD with. Check the Ubuntu WEB site for direction as the procedure may differ from one distribution to the next. Also, check the CD you burned on another computer to see that the burn was successful. Common troubles with burning an iso image to disk are 1). burn the image at too fast a speed resulting in corrupted information on the disk. 2). Burn the iso image file to the disk (when you view the contents of the disk you see a single file as filename.iso). You should use your burner software's option to burn a disk from an image (create a disk from an image). 3). This iso image file was corrupted when you downloaded it. Go to the Ubuntu WEB site and get the md5sum for the image file and check that when you run md5sum against the iso image you downloaded the resulting md5sum matches. HTH Ernie Registered Linux User 247790

If you have an old Win98 system with only 256MB RAM, I suggest you go with Xubuntu rather than Ubuntu. Also, you don't need to format the HDD beforehand. You *could* wipe out all partitioning & the MBR before the installation, but it's not absolutely necessary...all that will be taken care of during the installation. All you really need to do is boot off the Linux CD & wait for the desktop to appear. Then click on the INSTALL icon & follow the prompts. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements http://www.xubuntu.org/get

Over the weekend I did the following. 1. Burned the ISO to a CD and not a DVD (This did not work) 2. Changed the BIOS to only boot from CD (This did not work) 3. Tried to load XP on it from a CD I have for another computer (This did not work) I have concluded that the CD drive has something wrong with it. I am going to try and find a floppy disk version of Windows 98. I will also try and do Xubuntu. I think it is the CD driver though, since it does not load anything. I should have checked it before formatting. The CD player does light up and it sounds like it is doing something, but does not load.

You need to READ the above replies. First reburn that CD on the slowest speed you can. Use best quality cd's. I prefer the black ones, they seem to work on more older system Then test the CD in a newer system. Does it boot to the live cd? Ok then you can suspect the cd is working. Next try to boot to cd on that system. Remember, your bios has to say it can support booting from cd. ---It also has to be able to read burned cd's. ---It also has to be able to boot to the type of file system on newer cd's. Not all systems support isolinux or syslinux. You may need to boot to a floppy to support that drive. Might have to use boot options for that cd like -no atapi or something. Might have to get an older setup like puppy or DSL linux that has isolinux boot. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10

-I know that the Ubuntu CD works because it worked on my laptop. -I have tried Ubuntu, XP, Puppy, and made a cd for Windows 98 from bootdisk.com. -I have set my BIOS to only boot from the ATAPI-CDROM -I have the options Floppy, ARMD-FDD, ARMD-HDD, IDE-HDD, and ATAPI-CDROM The error message Invalid Boot Diskette Insert BOOT Diskette in A: I am assuming this means that the CD boot is not going to work no matter what. I need to find a floppy boot disk. Where can I find one of these?I know there is a place to download it, but I do not have a floppy drive on laptop and do not want to have to buy a USB floppy drive.