So far, so good with my new Eee PC (1005PE) Netbook. The machine came pre-installed with Win 7 Starter edition, so the first task for me to do was to get rid of Windows 7 and install Ubuntu Netbook on it. So I downloaded the Ubuntu Netbook 10.04 daily build image (yes, I am daring), and was on my way.
At first, this task seemed easier said than done because I was running in to the most fundamental problem possible, namely, I could not get the Eee PC to boot from the ‘bootable’ usb stick I created on my Mac Pro desktop. I checked every single bios settings, made sure that USB was chosen as priority boot drive, Still nothing. Kept getting the Windows 7 startup sound which was starting to get a bit tedious.
The next thing I thought was maybe the Cruser U3 software was causing the trouble so I went out and found a U3 uninstaller, and ran it. Still didn’t boot from the USB Stick. I then found out that in order to get the boot menu on the Eee PC, you need to hold down the Escape key while its booting. I tried that, it had the USB as a target bootable device, I selected it, but still went in to Windows 7.
At this point I was quickly running out of ideas, the only other thing I can think of was perhaps the USB stick was some how not bootable? Maybe the USB stick was not created correctly even though I followed the Ubuntu Mac instructions step by step. I downloaded the Ubuntu 10.04 daily build on to my Eee PC while booted in to Windows 7, and then downloaded this program called UNetbootin. This time I used that program to create my bootable USB stick, and then I tried to reboot again.
This time it booted in to the Live CD version of Ubuntu, yes, I was saved! I couldn’t believe that it was a bad image on my USB Stick. Why can’t a Mac create a bootable USB Stick? The strange thing is that the Eee couldn’t even read the files on the USB Stick when connected in Windows 7, but when the Stick was plugged in to my Mac Pro, I was able to see the files fine. And vise versa, once I created the USB Stick in Windows, I coulsn’t see the files on Mac. What is the deal here? I thought ISO images were platform independent?
With that being said the USB Stick problem is well in the past for me. Look for my next post where I will give my impressions of Ubuntu Netbook 10.04.