Bianca Live CD Boot is Endless

[gram]

I downloaded the Biance (v. 2.2) Full Edition iso, checked the md5sum, and burned it to a CD.

But when I tried to boot from that CD, the drive never stopped spinning, and the boot sequence never completed -- ctrl-alt-delete was of no use, and in the end, I just cut the power.

It's odd because the boot sequence started ok: I got the "Bianca" welcome screen, then I was presented with the start menu (I chose "F1" for the normal start sequence).

The background color changed, and I saw the mouse pointer, but the CD drive kept spinning, and the rest of the boot never finished.

The first time it happened, I was connected to a network router, so I removed the cable and tried again, but got the same result.

In both tries, the HD lamp did not come on at all, it was all reads from the CD, and the HD contents were intact (I rebooted without the CD and saw my normal partitions).

Any idea what's wrong?

The machine is a Toshiba Satellite laptop, model 2805.

Should I try it with a different iso (different edition/version)?

Or can I install from the CD in lieu of running through the default start sequence (the machine already has grub installed, and I have a partition on to which mint can go)?

[Boo]

you can only install once the live cd is up and running.

I have never hit the F1 button at boot.
I always just hit the enter key.

have you tried the cd in another computer?

the wiki has a cd trouble shooting guide:
http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... ur_Live_CD

[gram]

you can only install once the live cd is up and running.

Right, that's what I thought.

I have never hit the F1 button at boot.
I always just hit the enter key.

My mistake: what I meant was, when presented with the initial choices ("Start Linux Mint", "Start Linux Mint in safe graphics mode", "Boot from first hard disk"), I picked the default option, i.e., "Start Linux Mint".

And again, it seems to work, because the kernel loads, I get some hardware messages (swap activation and checking filesystems ok) and I see the mouse pointer.

It's just that after that, the CD never stops spinning, and I never see any menus/installation options, etc.

have you tried the cd in another computer?

No, unfortunately, I don't have another machine in which I can try it.

The CD is good (the iso check matched, and the burn showed no errors), so would switching versions (Bea instead of Bianca, for example) make a difference?

[telic]

Try booting from an alternate DVD drive, if you've got one. This resolved some Mint boot problems for others.

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[kenetics]

I've had bad cd's even though they appeared ok with valid checksums. You might try another download and iso burn.

[gram]

How difficult would it be to copy the contents of the live CD into the Windows partition, say under C:\mint, then boot from C:\mint instead of the CD?

I'm planning on installing Mint into the non-Windows partition (already created), so there shouldn't be any conflicts.

[scorp123]

How difficult would it be to copy the contents of the live CD into the Windows partition, say under C:\mint, then boot from C:\mint instead of the CD?

The search function is your friend http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2263

[gram]

Thanks for that link; even though the O.P. in that thread did not get it work, someone else pointed to this article in an ubuntu thread, titled "HOWTO: Install Ubuntu Linux without burning a cd": http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=28948

I haven't tried it yet (I'll probably burn another CD and try it again from there, as Groucho Marx icon guy mentioned), but how close are Mint and ubuntu?

I.e., if I follow those ubuntu instructions, do I have a reasonable chance of getting it work, or are there important differences between those distributions?

[scorp123]

but how close are Mint and ubuntu?

Close enough