Hi all, I decided to make one of my laptops dual boot to use when Im on public/hotel/etc networks. Went with Ubuntu since that seems to be the most noob-oriented Linux that I know of.

I burned the 32-bit (ubuntu website recommended 32-bit) Ubuntu 11.04 to a CD, booted from it, it gets to where I see the little graphic at the bottom that looks like a keyboard pointing to a human, then it went blank and stayed black for 15 mins, at which point I restearted withthe power button.

Second time it actually got to the point where it says Ubuntu on the screen and the 5 dots alternate colors.. did that for a few mins and froze.

Hard reboot.

Went into Win 7 64-bit and downloaded the Ubuntu windows installer, installed, rebooted... computer froze with a blank screen.

Used the same CD to install it on an older HP Pavillion dv2 with an AMD Neo processor - it works but it is slow.

The Toshiba has Core i5 450 and the Nvidia hybrid graphics - Intel for general tasks and switches to nVidia Optimus (Mobile Geforce 310) for 3D.

Is Ubuntu just not able to identify the laptop's hardware? Is there a way to make it work?

 

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Sounds like it's having a problem with hardware, yea, probably something lower level like a storage controller or system device. Any way to get the installer to search another location for drivers? Just gather all the Linux drivers you can find for your hardware and point it there.

 

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Search on the specific model of laptop. Someone has probably done it and, if you are lucky, documented it somewhere. Some hardware is just not supported though.

 

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Even though it worked on another slower system, try using an older 10.xx version....I also do not know if the issue could be the HYBRID GPU setup, anyway to disable 1 of the GPUs?