Installing Ubuntu On An Old Desktop (Fail)

For the past week or so, I've been trying to install Ubuntu on an old desktop that I got from the dump.  For those who are interested- it's a Dell Optiplex GX620 with a 3.0 GHZ Intel Pentium CPU, 2.0GB RAM, and 160GB SATA Hard Drive. It's been a bit of a process.

Attempting to install Ubuntu on my desktop, shown cracked open on the right

I decided to try download a 32-bit version of Ubuntu desktop install it using a DVD, but I ran into several problems along the way. One message that I consistently get while running the installer is "the ext4 file system creation in partition #1 of SCSI3 (0,0,0) (sda) failed." For one reason or another, Ubuntu's installer just does not want to partition my hard drive for me. I've tried setting it up manually several times so that I have set partitions for my /root and /home directories as well as swap space, but to no avail.

When I do manage to get past having the installer format the drive and the "Install" window appears with a loading bar, it will either freeze or crash midway through. Score!



Another issue I ran into was that after a certain number of reboots the desktop wouldn't start up, it would just beep at me after I hit the power button and the monitor would remain black.  After spending some quality time on Google, I found that I was experiencing a common problem.  My computer was having issues with its memory - specifically the RAM.  All I did to get it working again was switch around the four sticks of RAM on the motherboard and I was able to get the Dell boot menu back up on my monitor.

I've also done some diagnostics on my hard drive through the boot menu and received an error code 4 - supposedly there's something wrong with the drive's internal electronics.  I'm not sure if this is accurate though, I've been able to mount and reformat the drive using my laptop through a SATA to USB cable that I have. Oh well.

As a final act of desperation, I took the hard drive out of a deceased Sony Vaio laptop that I have and attempted to boot the desktop off of it.  The drive has Windows XP installed on it, but the difference in hardware between the old Vaio and the newer Dell desktop prevented me from running Windows. I did manage to get to the Windows boot menu though! So I guess my desktop's hardware works.

Over the next few days I'll be experimenting with creating a bootable Linux installer from a USB stick that I have kicking around, I'm thinking it might get me different results than the DVD I burned the installer onto. I'll also be experimenting with using a different internal hard drive in the desktop.

More to come soon!