bios problem?

daingeanrob

hi all, i am having a weird issue with a laptop that was given to me by a friend of mine, the laptop was originally running vista but last year one of this mans friends (who now doesn't live here anymore) told him ubuntu was the way to go and changed over the laptop to ubuntu. my friend not being farmiliar with ubuntu and having a few problems with it just wanted windows back,

no problem i thought untill i got the laptop. when i start the laptop i get no bios screen to choose boot order and it just (very slowly) boots into ubuntu with no options untill this loads just a blank screen. i tried putting this hard drive in my own laptop via a caddy in my dvd drive slot and after the bios i get a loader screen that defaults to ubuntu but the other options windows xp/vista don't load when selected.

does anyone have any idea on how i could get the bios screens back on the laptop ( its a dell xps1530) so i can do a fresh windows vista install?

Gone Drinking

If you take the hard disk out and start the machine, do you get the bios options? It sounds like its using a graphics driver that doesn't load until Ubuntu does.

Grudaire

You can generally get to bios by pressing a button as soon as you turn on the PC. (Before it gets to the GRUB loader screen which you are talking about)

The exact key is different for each laptop. But I would try F2, although I heard delete is sometimes used.

It's disappointing to hear that Ubuntu isn't working on the laptop. In general Linux will run faster on PC's, so clearly something isn't working correctly on the laptop.

Grudaire

Taking out the hard drive is a bit of a dramatic solution. Try look up the correct key for the laptop online, and hold the key as soon as you press the on button.


Alternatively the boot order has probably already been changed to boot from CD already (so that ubuntu could be installed on the laptop) so you may be able to skip a step.

Sounds like ubuntu wasn't installed correctly if the option to boot to windows doesn't work..

daingeanrob

thanks a million for the advice so far, i will try again later this evening. i was trying to install windows from usb but had no joy at all, i'll stick it on cd and see how i get on after trying the f2/delete button

Grudaire

Well if the F2 works then you can probably boot from the USB alright!

I just noticed that you said you have already removed the hard drive, so maybe Gone Drinking's solution is also an acceptable solution!