The first thing I did when I received my new Asus F6Ve-B1 was download Ubuntu 9.04 and ready myself for a clean installation of a decent operating system. I burnt the ISO, rebooted my PC, and entered the Ubuntu installation menu. Shortly after I was presented with a screen full of errors.

[ 57.764316] Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 22

This means that the CD cannot be read. Either because of faulty or misconfiguration hardware or faulty media. After a quick Google search, there appeared to be several solutions. The most popular ones being “Try a new CD ROM drive” and “Burn your ISO at a lower speed and verify the md5 signature.” I opted for neither of these solutions, an instead did a USB install. A very useful piece of software to aid in this process is UNetbootin.

UNetbootin can create a bootable Live USB drive, or it can make a “frugal install” on your local hard disk if you don’t have a USB drive. It can load distributions by automatically downloading their ISO (CD image) files, or by using existing ISO files, floppy/hard disk images, or kernel/initrd files, for installing other distributions.

This is a must have piece of software for your toolbox!