Live CD error after botched install of Mint 7

[Agenator]

Hello,

I'm a bit of a newbie to Linux in general but I did use Linux Mint 6 with some regularity and I decided recently to use it again on my desktop PC. Unfortunately I appear to have encountered an odd problem after a borked install of Mint 7.

My computer has two physical HDD's at 80gb apiece, one with Windows Vista and another with Windows 7, which I was seeking to replace with Mint 7. I recently had to transplant these drives into a new machine and while the drives still had data, the booting into either Windows installation was not possible, but this is a different problem.

Anyway, I was trying to install Mint 7 on the old Windows 7 HDD - I selected to format the entire drive and planned to use GRUB instead of the windows bootloader. The installation got to 94%, at the point where it runs the GRUB process and install, but it hung there for about an hour. Having installed Mint 6 in a relatively short amount of time, I decided that this might have been some funky problem, and made the following MISTAKE! - I hit close on the installer and told the livecd to restart, thinking I could just do another install. The result was a stream of errors when trying to load the livecd that look like this:

ata2.01: status: [DRDY ERR}
ata2.01: error [ UNC ]
563.672504] end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 217
and then a number of errors like the preceding line, but with "buffer i/o error on device sdb, logical block (then varying numbers)"

When the Livecd loads, it initially goes through the boot and says "ready" after loading two files (casper something?). I can see that it begins to get this error a split second before the Linux Mint loading screen appears, and after an extended period of time the screen goes away to just show the error. It keeps repeating, slowly.

I have attempted to just format the whole hard drive and start again, but the computer's current state prevents me from getting into windows. Tools like Hiren's Bootcd 10 have some problem loading with this computer, and although the BIOS says I can boot via USB, it doesnt appear to work.

Please help!

[Fornhamfred]

Hi

Sorry to sound dumb but are you able to run the live cd as a distro or is it refusing to boot?

If the later could I suggest you burn a new copy as your install problem may have been due to a faulty cd copy.

[Agenator]

I am trying to boot the LiveCD (but it is refusing to start). The goal is so I can run Mint 7 off the cd (and access the installer through this method). I also tried cancelling the auto-boot and selecting just the installer, still received the same errors.

The weird thing that has happened here is that initially the LiveCD booted fine, I got into Mint 7, and began the installer. No problems of this sort until I cancelled the install at 94% and attempted to restart the computer. I am still using that disk, however I can try just burning a new one.

Will post a result back, thanks!

[Agenator]

No luck with new cd. Same errors.

[terrorblader]

Try replacing the optical drive,it might have reading problems.

[Fornhamfred]

From past experience it may be worth changing the type of CD before changing the drive. I assume it works OK in windows.

It may be worth downloading a copy of a different distro and seeing if you get the same problem.

[monkeyboy]

You might drag out your old M6 live disk at least you know it is good. Good Luck

[terrorblader]

One more thing , verify the md5 of the downloaded image , it might be a bad download.

[Agenator]

Update: I messed around with the hard drives, alternating between plugging one in instead of the other. The result was that when the Windows 7 HDD was plugged, the LiveCD encountered this error, but the other HDD did not!

I also tried burning Ubuntu 9.04 and the LiveCD had the same problem. I used the verifier on both disks and it said they were fine.

Nevertheless, it appears to be a weird problem with that other HDD - I will try to format it somehow at a later point in time, but for now, Mint 7 is working.

[Fornhamfred]

Glad to hear that you are running OK to a point. Hardware problems can be very difficult to diagnose.