BleepingComputer.com: Ubuntu Installation

I am trying to install Ubuntu on my old laptop, which no longer has a functioning cd drive. To further complicate matters, the old OS, Windows XP, has become corrupted or somehow damaged, so I cant install it from the desktop. I tried making a bootable USB drive that I would use to boot from, but it doesnt work. Is there anything special i need to do to get it to boot and install the OS? I set the boot options in the BIOS to boot from Removable Devices first.

Did you use UNetbootin as suggested in the link below?
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/linux/creat...e-the-easy-way/

I have not done this procedure but it looks simple enough.

This post has been edited by buddy215: 30 May 2009 - 07:28 PM

I figured it out. Apparently in order to force a boot from the flash, I had to remove the HD, boot, then re insert the HD so the installation could proceed. Kinda weird method, but it worked fine. I did use Unetbootin to make the drive bootable

Clever.

After reading what the Ubuntu site had to say about problems with bootable flash drives,
QUOTE: "Booting from USB storage can be very handy, but there is no guarantee that it will work with your particular combination of computer and USB drive. Even if you are able to boot from your USB drive on one computer, this does not mean that it is going to work with the next one. You can try experimenting with different settings in your PC's BIOS to make it work.END QUOTE Your solution is one for the books.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installat...image%20creator

I now have Ubuntu 9.04 and was glad to see some of the nitpicky problems I was having with 8.04 are not in 9.04.

There was one that I had to look around a bit to find. SKYPE. I think Skype is dragging their feet on upgrading their
program for the 9.04.
I used the commands below after some other solutions failed to install Skype.

Open a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal). Copy the following code and paste it into the terminal.

Code:
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/jaunty.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

Then to get the GPG key
Code:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update

And finally
Code:
sudo apt-get install skype

After it installs, you can find Skype under Applications -> Internet -> Skype