This computer was originally Windows Vista, but Boot manager went missing and couldn't boot up.
A friend of mine gave me a compact disk with Linux 11.04, and replaced Vista. However, I am unable to login in any way other than in Safe Mode, or Classic: No Effects. I realize you can go into Update Manager and update it from there, but I need to download it from the Ubuntu software Center, which freezes upon launch. There was one time where I was able to search something in the software center, and turns out I have no sources to download anything. 700 some packages are broken, that may be a good connection, but I'll do the repair process and it'll say it fixed everything, when it did virtually nothing.
I downloaded the .iso for the newer Ubuntu, and made a bootable flashdrive, and using F12 to boot from the memory stick, it would start to work. Whatever option I chose from there (run Ubuntu from usb, install Ubuntu on a hard disk, etc) it would blast through some terminal stuff, then stop at when it says:
,locks=none
or under that it stops at
[ 0.288973] PnPBIOS: PnP BIOS version 1.0, entry 0xf0000:0x9afd, dseg 0x400
So, uh, are there any other methods of installing Ubuntu on a broken Ubuntu? Should I just buy a new computer? I'm stuck and lost and don't know what to do.
do-release-upgradein the Terminal. Your release is unsupported, and the only release you can upgrade to directly (11.10) is also unsupported, so you'll have to go 11.04 -> 11.10 -> 12.04 LTS (which is supported). And you'll need to switch to theold-releases.ubuntu.comdownload servers (for example, by editing/etc/apt/sources.list. See How to install software or upgrade from old unsupported release? (Maybe a duplicate.) – Eliah Kagan Sep 07 '13 at 16:39