When Things Go Wrong Think On Your Feet

The title is something I have lived by and has gotten me out of more then one scrape. Recently I updated my computer components which included a 64 bit cpu.
I was very intrigued about updating to Ubuntu 64 bit but I was a bit concerned as I have heard both good and bad reports about 64 bit.

So I downloaded the Iso and burned it to a Cd. Then I tested it in live mode for a week or so. I found it was working very well and any minor issues I had were the same ones I had in the 32 bit version. So one day I decided to upgrade my PC.
I had also added a new hard drive so I backed up all my files and folders to the slave drive. I was doing a full format and install and now I was ready to do it.

I inserted the 64 bit Cd and booted to it. I clicked on install and went through the whole routine. I have done upgrades and OS changes so many times that I have this down to a 2 hour task. And that includes installing updates and software that I use.

The install was at the point where it was copying over files when disaster struck.
At around 84% the installer said it couldn't copy a file because it was corrupted.
Uh-Oh!!! I committed a cardinal sin. When I burned that Cd I did not verify it.
Never had a problem before so I got lax and figured this burn was also good.
Mental note to self....... Verify the Cd you Dummy!

Now I was in a jam. I could easily install my old 32 bit version but that would be wasting time. What could I do? I decided to boot into my 32 bit Cd, download another 64 bit Iso to my slave drive and burn it from the XP partition that I still have installed for work and help reasons. Problem was that I no longer had a grub loader and there was no way to boot into it. I could have tried reloading grub but it was getting late and I needed to get this install done.

Then it hit me!
I inserted my flash drive and used the USB Start Up Disk Creator found in the 9.10 menu to install the new 64 bit Iso to my flash drive.
Once it was done I rebooted my computer and set the bios to boot from flash drive.
Ubuntu booted up and much to my relief it fully installed.

I now had a fully functioning 9.10 64 bit system and the grub loader was installed and my XP side of it was working also.
Planning to dump that XP partition but I still use it occasionally. Actually the last time I needed it was 2 months ago. LOL!!

I'm happy to say that using 64 bit has presented no problems. A few things in 9.10 are a bit different as is making some configuration changes but those are easily Google'd.
My computer is snappier and performs much faster then the 32 bit version in certain tasks.

So if you run into a major problem, don't panic.
Step back, take a deep breath and explore all your possible options.
Fortunately Linux provides you with many options to bail your butt out when you screw up. LOL!

Take care!

TaZ