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Frustrating Zorin 9 install. Please help!

rockyjoe

Fri Dec 19, 2014 6:43:04 am

Hello all.

I had been running Zorin 7 for a year or so with no problems. Upgraded to 9 today and have had countless problems.

1 - I was using a Cisco AM 10 USB wifi adapter with Zorin 7. Performed the 9 install (overwriting 7), it used the wifi connection to download
updates etc. during the install, then after the reboot with the new OS suddenly could not recognize the adapter. I unplugged it and plugged it
back in but nothing. Retried the install with a wired network connection with AM 10 plugged in then again not plugged in and tried to plug it in
but both times no good. Zorin 7 automatically recognized this piece of hardware. What's the problem with 9?

2 - I was using a Radeon HD6570 video card with Zorin 7, again no problems. After installing 9 everything just went haywire. It froze at different times
whenever it felt like it, sometimes at the login screen, sometimes after the first mouse move or keystroke after logging in, sometimes after logging
in it would just show a mouse cursor and nothing else, sometimes the whole screen except the mouse cursor, and every screen was full of speckles
and blinking moving things. I had to pull out the card and go back to the built in one on the motherboard.

3 - The DVD interprets whatever it feels like seeing on a DVD. I put a DVD in, it showed me all the files on it as well as the name of the DVD (volume label)
then I realized it wasn't the DVD I wanted so I took it out and put in another one. This time it showed that the DVD had nothing on it (which was not true)
and said something like "300 MiB volume" and still showed the name of the DVD that I had already removed. I just took it out put it in my Windows
machine, which read it with no problem then copied it to a flash drive, which Zorin was able to read.

At this point I'm exasperated. FWIW I also tried to do an Ubuntu 14.04 install on this box after I had problems with Zorin and the problems I had with it
were even worse. I can't believe that after this long linux is still at this level and that a higher level of an OS can't handle hardware that a lower one did.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Rocky

Wolfman

Fri Dec 19, 2014 9:18:37 am

Hi,

start your PC in "Recovery Mode" and first activate "Network" (Network cable required) and then drop to "root Shell" and type this command:

Code:
sudo apt-get install -f


If that doesn't work, whilst still in recovery mode, type the following command and restart your PC with Ctrl + Alt + Del:

Code:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -f

rockyjoe

Fri Dec 19, 2014 10:20:43 pm

Thanks for the info Wolfman. Neither of these helped.

1 - Which recovery mode should I choose? Linux 3.13.0-43 or Linux 3.13.0-32? I used 43.

2 - When I enabled networking it went through a bunch of stuff then before it went back to the menu screen said "/could not find support for device /pc0000:00.....(went by too fast to write down) - not supported by any plugin"

3 - I then went to root and when I typed sudo apt-get install -f it went through a bunch of stuff then said "The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required - localechooser-data - use apt-get autoremove to remove it. 0 upgraded, 0 installed, 0 to remove and 22 not upgraded. Rebooted, plugged in AM10 adapter, no good. Tried plugging into different USB port, disabling & enabling networking, unplugging wired network cable, all NG.

4 - Went into recovery mode again, enabled networking (got same message about "could not find support..." again) dropped into root and did sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -f. Went through a whole lot of connecting, downloading, upgrading, etc. Asked me for my approval on something once, said Yes, then finished. Rebooted with ctrl-alt-del. Still no good. Cold booted. No good. Shuffled around cables, etc. no good.

Plugging in the AM10 does absolutely nothing. The OS completely ignores it.

What should I try next? Thanks.

Wolfman

Sat Dec 20, 2014 5:08:18 pm

Hi,

if you ran those commands in recovery mode trying to use a WiFi adapter, it will fail, judging by what you have written, you didn't update because you had no internet connection and that is why YOU MUST USE A NETWORK CABLE!.

rockyjoe

Sat Dec 20, 2014 10:39:56 pm

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I was connected to the Internet via a network cable when I performed all of these steps. In fact I saw the computer connecting to various sites and downloading things. I even left the cable in when I plugged in the Wifi adapter. I only unplugged it after the wifi wasn't recognized to see what would happen.

Swarfendor437

Sat Dec 27, 2014 3:39:20 pm

Hi rockyjoe, update please?! :D

rockyjoe

Sat Jan 03, 2015 1:13:35 am

Hi. Sorry it took so long. Holiday busy-ness and all. I did some research and found that there were issues with Ubuntu recognizing the wifi adapter part of this device (this device also has a disk drive part with drivers on it) and found all kinds of talk about lsmod, uname, lsusb, the linux-firmware package, ndiswrapper, configuration files, and on and on and on. But this was about older versions of Ubuntu. I really don't want to be bothered digging around all over the place and modifying files, recompiling things, etc. Zorin 7 was able to recognize the thing right away and gave me access to it. Why doesn't Zorin 9? FWIW, I removed Zorin and installed Linux Mint and Mint didn't recognize it either. So what I did was just buy a Tenda PCI card for wifi access and it was recognized right away. Unfortunatley it's weaker and slower than the Linksys adapter so I'd still like to make it work. Thanks.

madvinegar

Sat Jan 03, 2015 8:29:27 am

When you have hardware that is somewhat old, you cannot expect from it, for example, to run win8.1
There will not be any drivers for your gpu, or motherboard etc.
Whilst when you install winXP on it, everything runs perfectly fine.

Maybe your hardware is designed to run better on older versions of linux.

Have you tried installing zorin 6 to see if all is ok? Try firstly with zorin6.1.
Zorin6 is a long term support release with support till 2017.

Swarfendor437

Sat Jan 03, 2015 5:19:04 pm

You may also want to try 9 once more using decalman's text install instructions:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8004&p=38810#p38714