Installing Ubuntu Linux Distro on Sony Vaio Laptop

So let me see if I understand properly. You tried installing both Ubuntu and later Windows XP, but neither would boot from the hard drive after installing? This says to me that you have a problem with your hard drive. Perhaps it is dying? Then again you also say something about already having windows vista installed, so I am a little bit confused. Or is your problem that the Ubuntu and XP cds will not even start the installation process at all? If this is the case, perhaps there is a problem with the CD drive? Unless, of course, you are able to use it without issues under vista?

Please let me know exactly what happens when you try to boot from an Ubuntu liveCD. You should see a screen that gives you 4 options such as "boot from hard drive", "test ubuntu", "install ubuntu", and "memory check" or something like that. If you select "test ubuntu" and it just hangs, you may be able to fix this by changing the boot time options that the operating system takes. Please get back to me with this info and I will try to help you out.

--Zorak

Doesn't seem to work after I'm logged on either, it plays DVDs just fine... But when I put any of the install disks in it acts like they are blank CDs... However they do work on my other systems. This makes no sense to me.

Thanks

That was my first idea too, but I wasn't able to get it to boot from USB either. I enabled it in the bios and made it the first and only boot device but again it simply says operating system not found.

I'm starting to think it has more to do with Sony Vaio not wanting you to reformat your hard drive, instead using their recovery console. They hid a lot of the bios options and all of this seems pretty shady to me, anyways I'm really at a loss here.

Thanks

Basically, its very plain and simple, almost no options except for, time settings, usb/network boot enabling, and boot order. The one thing I haven't tried is a network install because I'm very unfamiliar with that.

I guess I will give it a google and try it out.

Thanks

If you're a hardware guru, you could yank the drive from the vaio, install the OS on another computer and then put the drive back in the vaio.

Most versions of windows would be seriously dazed and confused so this is usually not a good option for windows, but most versions of Linux will work just fine as long as your architecture is the same and all your kernel modules are in place.

You might have to do some configuring but it should work

I've gotten away with doing this several times, it helps if the hardware is similar.

It doesn't matter that much that's it's a laptop.

If you get stuck don't worry you can get unstuck

Good luck

Very cool

Got some screenies for us?