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I wanted to repurpose my old HP laptop from 2017 as a simple home server, and had planned to run it on Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS. I did do a test install and it completed without issue and was running fine. However upon reinstallation, it ran into an error on 'probing for block devices'. I thought by just restarting the process it would be fine, but this time there was a crash at 'Use entire hard disk'. I kept restarting the installer multiple times and it just would not install. I tried Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS and this time it went all the way to the final logs part of the installer but nothing showed up, and it remained blank for hours before I eventually killed it. I thought installing another distro and repartitioning by hard drive before going back to Ubuntu would work, and I tried installing Debian 12 but it wouldn't install. I then tried the desktop version of Ubuntu, wouldn't install. In a last ditch effort I tried installing Windows 11 back onto the system and it doesn't install either. No OS I've tried has managed to install. What should I do?

hzq23x
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    Probably buy a new hard drive. I would suggest an SSD instead of an HDD as an SSD is much faster and there is a significant gain in performance when compared to an HDD. – mchid Jul 24 '23 at 01:08
  • Alternatively, you could try to repair the existing disk using fsck commands or as a last ditch effort, you could use dd to completely overwrite everything on the disk to start from scratch. Only use the dd command if you want to completely overwrite all data on the disk! You will lose everything. Replace /dev/sdX with the actual drive, e.g., /dev/sda or /dev/sdb , etc. The context of the linked question is kind of unimportant (bad sector) but your goal to repair the disk is the same. – mchid Jul 24 '23 at 01:14
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    So, dd will overwrite the entire drive with a bunch of zeros so you might need to set up partitions again as these will also be wiped. Another thing to consider is if the system is trying to install legacy bios style instead of EFI. If this is the case, then setting the BIOS to use legacy BIOS style boot may be an option. – mchid Jul 24 '23 at 01:19
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    STOP THRASHING! Pick a single release; struggle to Victory, done. Replace your disk - it's unreliable – waltinator Jul 24 '23 at 01:30
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    You've provided no actual clues as to what the issue is; did you look? Before I perform any install I verify the installation media using the methods used appropriate for the OS/release/media you're using (Ubuntu Server for modern releases will self verify; thus you need only wait a little then can confirm it succeeded; did you do that?) or you can read logs as to problems (again did you do that?) You appear to not be doing any checks, or at least didn't report doing any; just repeating the same steps with something different & ignoring your actual issue yet expect different results? – guiverc Jul 24 '23 at 01:33
  • I haven't provided a clue because I have absolutely no idea what the issue is. There are no logs to provide potential errors, it just crashes and says 'generating crash report' without any output. I'm not really well versed into Linux and Ubuntu that much, so I don't really know where to be checking for the issue. However my first suspicion was that it might be a hard drive issue. – hzq23x Jul 24 '23 at 02:28
  • I'll try what mchid said to see if it was indeed a HDD issue – hzq23x Jul 24 '23 at 02:30
  • Look at your system logs for clues.. We don't have access to your machine thus can't look for you, being limited to only what you provide. It's a GNU/Linux system thus use system logs; eg. for media verification its identical regardless of ISO used and thus installer (ie. release specific and not installer related), for install issues the installer matters (Ubuntu has 5 different installers available depending on ISO selected for ~recent releases) thus where to look can vary; but system clues are still detectable via text terminal & exploration (ie. it's a PC; general OS theory is good) – guiverc Jul 24 '23 at 02:36
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    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Smartmontools for SMART and exploration of drive health; this is generic theory, with only the actual command varying slightly between OS (be it POSIX, BSD/Linux/GNU or even windows) – guiverc Jul 24 '23 at 02:37
  • I found out how to run the startup diagnostics on the laptop. I did the quick hard drive check and surprisingly nothing was wrong. Currently doing a memory test. I know logs are very helpful in identifying the error, but I can't access them. The installer just stops working and is stuck on 'generating crash report' and doesn't show anything. Upon retrying, the crash still happens but somewhere else in the install process like 'probing for block devices'. Once again, it says it's generating a report but nothing is actually generated. – hzq23x Jul 24 '23 at 15:21
  • Classic behavior of faulty hardware. Most commonly a dying had drive. Maybe a bad motherboard. Ubuntu is not designed to work on faulty hardware nor compensate for hardware faults. Get your hardware working properly, then the installer will work. – user535733 Jul 24 '23 at 20:28
  • Did a quick hard drive check, an extensive hard drive check which took 4 hours, a memory check, all tests passed without issue, weird. – hzq23x Jul 25 '23 at 05:43

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No idea how, but I fixed the problem. Changed by boot order settings and moved the boot USB below the boot manager before using the boot menu to boot into the USB. Ubuntu Server installed fine, SSH and all are working. Thanks for the help, it's my first time asking on this website, will learn as I go on.

hzq23x
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