Hokay, **** iz happahning. I burnt the image onto a disk just like the IR Dude reco'd, and booted from it. I get a screen with 6-7 options like "Start or Install Ubuntu", "Start Ubuntu in Safe Graphics Mode", "Memory Test", "Check Disk for Errors", etc etc. So I selected "Star or Install Ubuntu". It takes me to a list of various services being [OK]'d, about two pages worth, including GNOME something something. Then the screen goes black for some time, before going all orange and everything with Ubuntu written in the centre, and an error box up to the left, informing me that GNOME has just messed up bigtime, and certain services like themes, backgrounds etc might not show up, and gnome'll reload the next time I log in. Its got a 'Close' button, but I can't move the mouse pointer or select it with the keyboard. It shows this for about fifteen-odd minutes, before blacking out completely. Oh, and throughout this thirty-five - forty-odd minute procedure (Yeah, well, I'm jobless), the CD's continuously being read. Fast. I had to restart manually twice, and now its time for some Silent Hunter. Any brainwaves? Running the "Check Disk for errors" says that there were two errors found and press any key to restart, but thats all it says or does. Helpful, what?
Oh, and I got around the mouse issue by digging out my eight year old three button logitech serial mouse, which, I am happy to say, is working magnificently for something that old. Oh Happy Days!
Not one to give up easily (another way of saying I'm still jobless), I decided to give Tux another go. So I reboot, go to the menu, and press F1. Tadaa! An amazingly unhelpful help page with nothing related to what the menu screen I'd just left displayed. After staring at it for a minute or so with my mouth hanging somewhere near my belly, I hitched up the lower jaw and decided its time for some 'jugaad'. Somewhere in the Help page, it said something about live booting from the cd by typing Boot:Live acpi=off. So I went back to the menu, selected Boot Options (F6), and typed in just that. This time, I got a scrolling list of stuff I wont pretend to know anything about, and was just about to breathe in again when the scrolling stopped, and the caps lock and scroll lock indicators started blinking. It said, at the bottom of a long and similar list, those terrible, terrible words - Panic! More specifially;
[74873657] Kernel Panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount fs on unknown - block (104, 1)
Any ideas?
Oh, and not bad for a newb, what?