Not booting after Ubuntu server install

[RavUn]

I installed the Ubuntu server edition and it was finishing up setting up the base system and the PC appeared to shut off. I don't know if an error displayed or if it just randomly shut off or what... Either way, I have not been able to get the PC to boot ever since. When I was setting it up I had 48 MB of PC66 RAM and 64 MB of PC100 RAM and I'm hoping that mixing PC66 and PC100 didn't mess anything up. I had heard that if you mix then it would just make them all work as PC66 so I figured I'd use them both to get through the install then use only the 64 MB card to run the server.

Now, I've tried with a 128 MB card from my other PC and it still does not boot.

I turn on the PC and everything lights up, it checks the floppy and CD-ROM but it does not boot. Usually it goes to the blue HP screen and then it would go to the ubuntu installation screen (if I had the CD in) or it would just go to the CLI screen... but I get nothing. I do not get the beep before boot-up, so something must be wrong with the hardware I imagine.

Can anyone help me or point me in a direction to diagnose this problem? I've tried searching ubuntuforums.org but have not found anything and I do not know what to search for. Please help if possible, thanks.


*EDIT* I've run across a few friends online who seem to know a bit. It's starting to look like it may be a dead motherboard... Might be due to combining different types of mem. I'm trying to manually reset the BIOS settings now.

[chuckl]

If you put the Ubuntu CD in, does it bring up the installation screen?
If so, there's not too much wrong with the motherboard. Could also be a bad hard drive, or hard drive partition setup. If you can get the Ubuntu installation screen, run a recover. If the installation did not complete, the installed system is almost certainly not bootable. There is a lot of vital stuff set up right at the end of the onstall, like the bott loader and partition.
You don't say what model HP/Compaq you are using, but many of the require ACPI, APIC and LAPIC or a combination disabled on install in order to get the install to work.

[falko]

I think the Ubuntu server kernel is the problem. For example, If you install a Ubuntu server on a laptop (in a virtual machine), it won't boot. You can try to replace the server kernel with Ubuntu's desktop kernel.