Hi all, I bought my UDOO x86 board last March, but it was DOA and I was able to get it RMA'd. It took a month or so to get the board back to me here in the US due to waiting for a back-ordered wall-wart power support. Unfortunately, by the time I got the board back, I had to break away to work on some home construction projects over the summer. So I've never actually tried the "new" (replacement) board. Yesterday I unboxed the unit and powered it up. I downloaded various ISO files for both Ubuntu and Ubuntu MATE, and burned them to USB flash drives and microSD cards, using the procedures demonstrated on the Getting Started site and YouTube videos. All sha256 checksums are good. However no matter what I do, I cannot for the life of me to get the board to install any of the operating systems I've downloaded. I can get into the BIOS (an improvement over the first UDOO I bought), and can see the bootable devices...but when I select the media with the OS on it, it goes to installation menu but then hangs when I select an option. I can't "install" it, I can't "try it without installing", and I can't even "verify the disk." Nothing works--it just hangs. I've let it run for 15-20 minutes without any effect besides a black screen. I have looked around in the BIOS and experimented with some settings, like turning off the wifi and bluetooth adapters (I didn't buy the module), but nothing I've tried makes a difference. So I've just restored to system defaults and tried to install again. Nothing. I don't know what to do with this thing, short of pitching it in the garbage. I have literally installed hundreds of Linux operating systems on everything from servers, to workstations, to laptops, and even to embedded devices like the RPi, OrangePi and the Beaglebone/Beaglebone Black units. NONE have come close to being as difficult as this thing is to use. Does anyone want it? I've had enough of it, to be honest. It apparently takes a better man than one with a CS degree and about 12-15 years of Linux experience to figure this thing out. Before I pitch it in the garbage though, is there anything someone can suggest that I might try? I am trying to dig up a Windows 10 download just to try to install--but as of yet I haven't had any luck with that. Thanks. TB
Forgot to mention, I've tried both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Ubuntu and Ubuntu MATE...same (bad) luck. Also, I have found the Windows 10 download link, and am making a USB installer per the instructions in the GET STARTED X86 video. I sure hope this thing loads that OS. TB
No such luck... Got Windows downloaded and a USB boot drive created, using the MS installer utility from the website shown in the GETTING STARTED X86 video. But even thought the MS bootable drive creation utility tells me it succeeded in creating a bootable drive, I get the blue screen of death when I start the installation, and this error message appears:
Well, a blind squirrel does find an acorn sometimes. Twelfth time is a charm, I guess... Still won't install Linux though.
OK, I finally got it to accept a Linux OS. It took over 10 tries, to be honest. I'll detail my problems so that someone else might benefit from this thread... I had been using Windows 10 to format various devices (microSD, SD, USB sticks), to accept an OS. I used UNetBootin to burn the ISOs onto the devices, but then turned to Etcher and Rufus when UNB didn't work. I tried 32- and 64-bit versions of Ubuntu, Debian and Ubuntu MATE (18.04), but none of these worked. I was formatting the media using the format utility in Win10, and it was reported as a successful format each time. But I would then get various degrees of failure, as previously described in this thread. With Linux, it would simply hang forever when I tried to install the OS. I would get a menu with the options to either try the OS without installation, to install the OS, or to check the disk (ISO) for problems. NOTHING would work--it would simply freeze/hang indefinitely when I selected any of those options. So what I did to finally get it to work turned out to be fairly simple: I stopped using the worthless formatting tool in Windows! All it does it give you the option for a "Quick Format," and I think that's where the problem was. So I started a Linux machine, and then did a full format to FAT32. It took a few minutes, but once I did that I booted back into Windows 10, and then used the Windows bootable installation tool from the MS website. It made the installer and then I was able to fully install Windows 10 in the 32GB flash area (it took 16GB). Then I re-formatted the same USB stick using gparted in Ubuntu, and once again booted back into Windows 10. Using UNetBootin I then burned the Ubuntu MATE ISO onto the flash drive. Then I was able to install MATE onto the 128GB M.2 flash stick, and configure the OS accordingly. This was a painful process, but hopefully my struggles will benefit someone having similar problems. In a nutshell--don't use the Windows format utility if you're having problems. Try to get a FULL re-format of the USB stick using Linux, and then try to burn your ISO. That's what ended up working for me after well over ten attempts using several distros. Hope others find this thread to be useful.
