| Links: This web-page on BIOS settings is very brief. I am only trying to cover the topics where BIOS settings might affect the installation and booting of Ubuntu Linux in someone's computer. The BIOS settings in our PCs are very interesting and very important to the way our PC works. It might be a good idea to spend a little more time exploring in your BIOS setup, you may find settings there that will surprise you and help you get more out of your computer. For some great information about all kinds of BIOS settings that are beyond the scope of this web page, here are a few of my favorite links to some more comprehensive web pages about the BIOS. |
|
My Ubuntu CD doesn't boot, If you can't get your computer to boot with the Ubuntu CD, check to see if your computer can boot a different live CD. Any live CD will do, GParted -- LiveCD or Super Grub Disk , System Rescue CD or Puppy Linux are all examples of Live CDs that should boot easily in most computers. You might also be able to try the Ubuntu CD in a different computer and see if it will boot. If it seems like your Ubuntu CD is no good in any computer then it might be that you have burned a data CD or a faulty Ubuntu CD. Maybe you should do an MD5 checksum integrity test on the .iso file you downloaded. If the .iso file passes the MD5 sum test then try burning again, make sure you burn it as an .iso CD and not as a data CD, burn at a slow speed and buy good quality CDs and try not to allow them to get dirty (fingerprints) or be scratched. Keep them in a CD cover or case, not lying around bare on the table or desk. If the .iso file you downloaded didn't pass the MD5sum test then you have a corrupted download and you will need to try downloading the same file all over again. If you are trying to download through a web browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox, you might have trouble downloading large files perfectly. Try some other way of downloading your files, such as BitTorrent or use the Linux wget command. |
|
My computer can't boot any Live CD If it seems like your computer can't boot any live CD, then the most common reason is that your computer's CMOS, or 'BIOS' 'boot order' (or sequence), is not set up to boot from the CD-ROM drive. Most computers come like that when they are new for security reasons. You can change the BIOS boot order quite easily before you run your Live CD and then change it back again if you are worried about security. If you want convenience as opposed to security, you can leave it set to boot from the CD drive before the hard drive, ready for next time. Another problem that can arise is the lens in the optical drive might need cleaning. Here's a link to where I have written about that, Clean your optical drive lens. |
|
The easiest way to get into the BIOS For most computers, the easiest way to get into the BIOS settings is to find the 'Pause/Break' key on your keyboard first. Restart your computer and while it is starting up, watch carefully and press the 'Pause/Break' key as soon as anything appears on your monitor. The computer will wait until you have time to read any messages on it. When you have read whatever is there, just press your 'Enter' key to resume booting the computer. Then press the 'Pause/Break' key again in the next page of text. There should be some information there somewhere telling you what key to press to enter your computer's BIOS. On my computers it's the 'Delete' key, but some computers are different. Another way to find out is to see if it's explained in the manufacturer's instructions. If you still can't find out how to enter your computer's BOIS, try reading this link > Change the BIOS settings (from Tips For Linux Explorers, brunolinux.com When you find the right key and press it at the right time, you should expect to see something like the image in the illustration below. This is what mine looks like, I expect that yours will probably be different, but you can still get a few ideas from looking at mine, I hope. |
|
Pheonix - AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility
|
| Getting Product Information |
|
Pheonix - AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility
Product Information
|
|
| Making sure your hard disk is properly detected in your BIOS And checking installed memory You cannot do anything with a hard disk that is not properly detected in the BIOS. If you have a hard disk that is not being detected in your BIOS, check to make sure it is spinning up when you start your computer.
|
|
Pheonix - AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility
|
|
Step 1 Select 'Standard CMOS Features, and press Enter. |
|
Pheonix - AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility
Standard CMOS Features
|
| Step 2 You can see near the bottom of the screen here, how much memory is installed. This is autodetected by the system, you don't have to do anything manually to install new memory. |
|
Pheonix - AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility
IDE Channel 0 Master
|
| Step 3 When you plug a different hard disk drive into your computer, most modern computers will automatically detect the hard disk and add it to the CMOS settings without the user doing anything at all. Step 3 is to just press Enter. You can look in here if you suspect there is a problem. For example if you try to install an operating system on a new hard disk and the installer doesn't 'see' your hard disk at all. You can check here to see if your hard disk was detected okay in the BIOS and just to make sure you can press 'Enter' to auto detect again. Older computers needed this done every time a hard disk was added. Very old hard drives in very old computers used to need the disk geometry (cylinders, heads etc.) information typed in manually. You should probably not attempt to do that unless you really have to and you know what you are doing. |
| Links: This web-page on BIOS settings is very brief. I am only trying to cover the topics where BIOS settings might affect the installation and booting of Ubuntu Linux in someone's computer. The BIOS settings in our PCs are very interesting and very important to the way our PC works. It might be a good idea to spend a little more time exploring in your BIOS setup, you may find settings there that will surprise you and help you get more out of your computer. For some great information about all kinds of BIOS settings that are beyond the scope of this web page, here are a few of my favorite links to some more comprehensive web pages about the BIOS. The BIOS: The 'Basic Input Output System' Setup Program Used in PCs |
| Changing the hard Disk Boot Priority (Control which hard disk will boot) If your PC has more than one hard disk, you can control which hard disk will be set as the number 1 hard disk and which will be number 2 hard disk and so on. The first way your can control that is by the way you have the hard drives plugged in to your motherboard. If they are IDE hard drives, you need to use jumpers to set which will be master and which will be slave on each ribbon cable, or set them both to 'cable select' if your cable is a cable select one. If you have SATA hard drives, you can plug them into the first, second or third port and so on, on the motherboard. The second way to control your hard disk boot priority is to change the settings in your PCs BIOS. Often you might need to do it this way if you have both SATA and IDE drives and there's a problem with the software deciding which should be first, IDE or SATA drives. Changing the hard disk boot priority in the BIOS is now thought to be the easiest way to cure Grub error 17 when it is caused by this IDE vs SATA BIOS problem. |
|
Pheonix - AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility
|
|
Step 1 Select 'Advanced BIOS Features, and press Enter. |
|
Pheonix - AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility
Standard CMOS Features
|
|
Step 2 Select 'Hard Disk Boot Priority', and press Enter. |
|
Pheonix - AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility
Standard CMOS Features
|
| Step 3 Press the + or - keys to move the selected item up or down in the list. This way you can tell your PCs BIOS how you want your hard disk to be numbered rather than just letting it decide for itself. Some BIOSes will list all IDE hard drives first, and all SATA and USB drives last. Other BIOSes will list all SATA hard drives first, and all IDE and USB drives last. You might find a BIOS that will list hard drives first some other way. Unplugging hard disks and changing cables around is one way to get your computer all mixed up. Make sure your cables and jumpers are plugged in right first, okay? Good! |
| Booting a non-first MBR with GRUB If you use Grub as your bootloader you can boot any hard disk you want whenever you like without the need to go into your PC's BIOS at all. To boot a non-first MBR, just paste a command sequence like this one to the bottom of your menu.lst file, Code:
or, use a sequence of commands like this from Grub's Command Line Interface Code:
Other ways are to boot a non-first hard disk's MBR are,
|
| Changing the boot sequence in CMOS This setting controls the sequence in which the PC's BIOS will search for a bootable device at each boot-up. The computer will try to boot the first bootable device it finds. If you have a bootable floppy disc or a bootable CD-ROM, you need to set the BIOS to look in the floppy disc drive and/or the CD/DVD drive before it looks at the hard disk drive or your floppy disk or CD won't boot. |
|
Pheonix - AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility
|
|
Step 1 Select 'Advanced BIOS Features, and press Enter. |
|
Pheonix - AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility
Standard CMOS Features
|
|
Step 2 Select the 'First Boot Device', and press Enter. |
| Step 3 This is what it looks like in my computer when I'm changing the boot sequence. I use my 'Up Arrow' key or my 'Down Arrow' key to move the little white square next to the item I want to select for 'First Boot Device'. Then I press 'Enter', and do the same for 'Second Boot Device', until have the three or four bootable devices listed the way I want them. Be sure your hard disk drive is one of the devices in your list, or your computer might not boot up when you want it to. All you'll have to do is come back here and change it again, but it cause you a delay and possibly some frustration if you don't realize what the problem is. That's all you need to do to set your BIOS boot sequence, now if you are in a hurry, just press 'F10' to save, (or whatever the instructions tell you in your brand of BIOS program), and 'Y' to confirm if it asks you, and 'Esc' to exit. If your BIOS has different instructions then just follow whatever instructions you are given, but that's how mine works. Here's an article about the BIOS option "Plug & Play Operating System ", alias "PnP OS" or "PnP Aware O/S". SDB:Problems Caused by the BIOS Option "PnP OS" That article is for SuSe Linux, but it might be true for Ubuntu too, I'm not sure. |
|
Pheonix - AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility
Standard CMOS Features
|
|
Step 4 Press F10 to save your settings and exit. Don't forget to check and make sure they're correct before you do. As you can see here, I have set my floppy disk as the first boot device and my CD drive second. My computer will check for a bootable hard disk only after checking the floppy disk and CD/DVD drives for bootable media. If there is more than one hard disk in my PC to choose from, I can set the 'Hard Disk Boot Priority' if I need to as well, here's a link about that, Hard Disk Boot Priority. |
| Links: This web-page on BIOS settings is very brief. I am only trying to cover the topics where BIOS settings might affect the installation and booting of Ubuntu Linux in someone's computer. The BIOS settings in our PCs are very interesting and very important to the way our PC works. It might be a good idea to spend a little more time exploring in your BIOS setup, you may find settings there that will surprise you and help you get more out of your computer. For some great information about all kinds of BIOS settings that are beyond the scope of this web page, here are a few of my favorite links to some more comprehensive web pages about the BIOS. The BIOS: The 'Basic Input Output System' Setup Program Used in PCs |
|
Turn off MBR antivirus or write protect |
| 'Boot
sector antivirus' or 'MBR' protection features are supposed to protect the MBR from being written to by so called 'boot
sector' viruses. Boot Sector viruses were very common in the old days when people used floppy disks a lot. An computer could become contaminated with a boot sector virus if it was rebooted with a non-write-protected floppy disk in the floppy disk drive. How to Write-Protect a Floppy Diskette - HelpDesk (external link). Floppy disks could carry and spread a boot sector virus if they were used in an infected computer. When this feature is turned on, it stops anything being written to the IPL area of the MBR. The problem is, it can also stop programs we want from being written to the MBR, like GRUB, GAG or LiLo Boot Loaders/Managers. If you are having trouble trying to install the IPL for your new boot loader to your MBR, this could be the problem.. If the 'MBR', or 'boot sector' is locked, then you won't be able to boot Linux except by CD or floppy disk, - such as Super Grub Disk. Please do not become confused by the terms 'boot sector' and 'Master Boot Record'. A 'boot sector' is normally the first sector of a partition. A 'boot sector' could be said to belong to the operating system inside the partition. The MBR (Master Boot Record) is the first sector or a hard disk, it is also a boot sector, but it is a very special kind of boot sector. The MBR is the first sector of a hard disk and does not belong to any partitions or the operating systems in them. Rather, the partitions and operating systems in the hard disk belong to the MBR, because the partition table itself is part of the MBR. That is why it is called the Master Boot Record. It is not correct to call a MBR "The (insert-name-of-operating-system) MBR". The MBR does not belong to any particular operating system. The MBR belongs to the hard disk and the hard disk belongs to whoever owns the computer. If you went to a martial arts class and you stood in the place reserved for the master and you were one of the students would you not expect to be disciplined? Then why does an operating system think it owns the Master Boot Record of all hard disks in the world, when it is just one of many operating systems? The owner of the computer may choose any software he or she likes and install it in the MBR. |
| System Health Check If you have time, there's something else interesting to look at in most computer's BIOS's, the 'System Health Status'. |
| fig 4 bios To enter the PC Health Status page, highlight that line and press 'Enter'. |