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My computer won't boot up the installation iso file from the CD. I've gone into bios and enabled boot from cd-rom. The system won't recognize that it can be boot from this file. I have windows xp. Trying to install 12.04.2. I have x86 architecture. I then changed the bios to only boot from cd-rom and it promts f1 to reboot (endless loop) or f2 to setup.

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Is there any error message that it shows you? Or is it exactly as though the CD were not inserted into the drive? (Please update your question by editing it, to include this information. Thanks.) –  Eliah Kagan Apr 7 '13 at 21:23

3 Answers 3

Either your BIOS does not recognize that CD, or the burn did not work right. I'd try again with another CD to make sure that the burn worked okay. If you have another computer, you could try to boot from that CD on that other computer. Also, if you have a 32bit computer, did you make sure you had the 32bit Ubuntu (opposed to 64bit)? Because your BIOS could not boot a 64bit version without the adapted hardware, obviously.

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I have personally made the mistake of accidentally writing an iso file as a file to the disk. The iso file is designed to become a disk. If you made the same mistake, your computer will not be able to boot from the disk. I cannot recommend Ubuntu's page enough to help with this issue.

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you can check the integrity of your download and/or your CD. have a look at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM there are instructions for checking the iso file and cd. the method for checking the CD is a little bit complicated it seems, but you could try and checking the iso is very strait foreword, and might save you lots of trouble.

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