Ubuntu Live CD Ugliness :(

*If this is the wrong section to put this please move*

I just wanted to give a friendly warning about Ubuntu Live CD. It seems there is a bug in the program that can caues BIOS issues as I ran into it tonight.

I was initially tring to fix a 4GB USB stick that for some odd reason was showing only 2.6GB available and reformatting was not recovering the missing space. After a bit of searching, I thought that I may be able to fix the issue in a Linux environment.

I pop in my Ubuntu CD and select the Live CD (don't change anything) and all seems to be going well. I do some formatting of the USB but the issue is still not solved so I decide to give it up.

After restarting into Windows, I go to use the DVD Drive that the Live CD was in and the tray would not open. I check Windows Explorer and it's there but clicking it throws up an inexcessable error. I try a few restarts with holding the eject button, ect, ect and nothing doing. Windows sees the drive, Device Manager shows no errors on the device and it's there in my BIOS.

I try System Restore and more problems crop up. The restore seems to work but after the User Name and Password screen I never get to the desktop. Using a 2nd computer I find where others have had BIOS issues after using the Live CD so I reload my saved BIOS settings. Now I'm getting BSOD but finally the DVD drive is opening and closing like normal.

After fiddeling around I remember that I had switched from Sata as IDE to AHCI and rechecked my BIOS. I had not actually saved that setting and it had reverted. I set it back to AHCI and have to do a Last Known Good Config. to finally set everything straight.

Needless to say I am not impressed with Ubuntu Live CD at the moment and am still trying to figure out why the stupid USB stick is missing space.

I don't care for running an OS via CD/DVD ROM. A VM (VirtualBox is fine) is a far better option, and you can delete it all with a few clicks. I haven't tried it on Windows Virtual PC, so I can't give suggestions there.

And secondly, I've never been able to install Mint (my favorite) onto a USB stick, even on my 16GB one. I've tried everything, so I just run it either on a VM in Windows, and on my second hard drive, I have 600GB designated as backup, the rest (approx 175GB partitions each, two of them) are used for Ubuntu & Mint.

The reason that they're so large is so that I can run Windows inside of VirtualBox.

Cat

I get DVD drive inaccessibility problems (won't eject, can't browse) occasionally which require running a registry fix script.

If you install Windows while the hdd is in IDE mode, you need to install AHCI drivers to Windows before switching the SATA mode in BIOS, or Windows will BSOD on re-entry due to not having the correct driver to mount the OS partition.

I am unclear as to what it was exactly that the Ubuntu LiveCD supposedly changed in your BIOS.

This is how I originally set up my system. I installed Windows in the IDE mode and then installed the AHCI drivers after (then I had to use a Registry 'hack' to get it all running properly).

As to what the Live CD did to my BIOS, I am honestly not sure but it is a bug and others that run AHCI or RAID may get the same issue as I did so I just wanted to get this out as a fair warning to anyone wanting to try a Ubuntu Live CD.

I find it highly unusual that a Live CD would affect the BIOS settings. But stranger things have happened.