In the scale of hard times, failing to install an operating system, especially when one has a backup of another computer, is small change. It can wear you out, though, and I’ve spent several long nights failing. I try to think of Beckett’s Westward Ho (’No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’). I attempted to chronicle it, but failed in that too. Below is a sample.

Last night was a very weeney small hours night, trying to install a dual-boot Vista/Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) on an Intel dual-core HP Pavillion dv6558 notebook computer.

The 7.10 disc I’d got through the post didn’t work - the dvd drive went crazy before it made it into the live desktop, then failed to install.

So I tried downloading and burning.

Maybe it wasn’t the computer or Ubuntu. Maybe it was a faulty burn, and I’m hoping this is the case. Following psychocat’s Ubuntu Linux Resources) instructions , I first downloaded
Bittorrent and got the iso, then downloaded WinMD5Sum - “it compares the the file on your computer to the original file and lets you know if they’re an exact match or not”, and it did; then InfraRecorder to burn the .iso file to a disc.

That’s when the fun started. Bittorrent did a wonderful job, and WinMD5Sum worked (I tried it on an incomplete file and it spotted that, so I’m confident about it). But InfraRecorder refused to burn first a DVD and then a CD-R disc.

It seems there’s an issue with HP Pavillions (and some Compaqs). See this thread

I’ve tried a number of other burners since, including Final Burner, which seemed to burn it properly, but maybe not.

But thinking over it, it may be that Vista doesn’t like the burning software I’ve been using. So the last thing I can think of is to burn the live cd in XP and fortunately I have a loan of a late friend’s computer which has XP (I can’t do it in Ubuntu as the DVD drive is broken on that machine). Hopefully I can use the recommended InfraRecorder to burn the .iso file to a disc and all will be well.

More later, if I have the energy. Here’s hoping