[dhinojosa]

Iswartz, again thanks for the help. I tried it on two different usb drives. Mini says missing operting system on both. The os program I copied was about 700 k. Did i need to do anything to the file? Also, comments here have said I need a bootable usb drive. I researched that and have found that you can make a bootable usb drive. The usb drives were your average store bought usb drives. What do you think? I can retrieve other files off of the usb drive.

[lswartz]

The link for Ubuntu in post #7 shows you exactly how to create a bootable USB flash drive with Ubuntu 10.04 or 11.10 using Ubuntu, Mac or Windows to create it.

[dhinojosa]

Thanks again, got abootable drive. Downloaded ubuntu. When I tried to save it o the hard drive, got message: fatal error, grub could not install. also having problems getting wireless set up using usb as start up.

[lswartz]

If you are using 10.04 it requires the propriety Broadcom STA driver to use the Broadcom wireless card work. Get it by using an Ethernet connection.

Did you try to save Ubuntu to your HD vs. installing? It should work in any USB port, but I suggest using the one closest to the power connection for OS installation. I have had a grub error report before & the 2d try worked. I hope it does for you too.

[ByteMe Networking]

I have to post 3 times before I can post my resolution

---------- Post added at 07:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:52 PM ----------

All,

I tried the above solutions and was not able to resolve this issue until I got in touch with a user from the Dell Forums.

They gave me a program that fixes the BIOS reading the drive as 0mb.
My drive is a STECH 8GB SSD drive std that came with Mini 9.

This app needs to be ran from dos so you need to either make a bootable USB drive or find some other means to get to a dos prompt.

(Sorry for the cruddy pics)
I forgot to take a picture of the bios before I ran the app but it looked the same as the picture below other than the "HDD Size" showed 0MB.




Then I ran the application provided to me which will !!!!!ERASE YOUR HARD DRIVE!!!!! and looks like the following when ran. App attached.

[dhinojosa]

Everything is working. I had to reload the broadcom drivers. If anyone ever has to do this, make sure you are plugged into the internet with hard wire. I am using Ubuntu as my os and have wireless access. I learned a lot about terminal and sudo. It was a great experience. I want to thank everyone for your help. Till next time.

[lswartz]

I am glad you got it working & you are right about terminal use. It is kind of neat