"softreset failed device not ready"

[faint545]

Maybe you've been getting an error similar to this...

ata1: softreset failed (device not ready) ata2: softreset failed (device not ready) modprobe: FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.28-11-generic/modules.dep: no such file or directory

when you are attempting a fresh install of a Linux distro. I've noticed this error has happened for users who upgraded to a newer version of Ubuntu.

Does anyone know what the hell this error is referring to? I tried installing Mint on a VM and it works perfectly but whenever I try to install Mint on my actual PC, I get this error. Seems like a lot of people have this problem but no one seems to know a solution. In my case this is what happened... http://i27.tinypic.com/34ec1mc.jpg

[kilgoretrout]

That error message would indicate a problem with the ata system, most likely a problem reading your optical drive if it's on an ide port. I've seen similar errors with hard drives connected to ide ports, particularly those on a pci expansion card ide controllers. However, in those cases, the hard drive is set to PIO mode and runs dog slow instead of refusing to work. In your case, I would suspect a problem reading the cd-r media or a bad burn. The first two error messages indicate a problem reading from the optical drive and the last one indicates it can't find something that should be there and aborts.

Double check your cd-r media and compatibility with your optical drive for starters. Have you tried passing any boot parameters? If you have more than one optical drive, try the other one, particularly if you have both ide and sata optical drives - try using the sata drive. If you know the chipset of your ata/ide controller on your motherboard, please post that info.

[faint545]

My optical drive is an external one. Would that cause an issue? I've used this optical drive internally before I converted it to external to install Linux and it worked fine. I'll try plugging it in straight into the mobo via ide and see if that works.

[kilgoretrout]

My optical drive is an external one. Would that cause an issue?

Yes, it sure can be an issue. Definitely, try plugging your optical drive into your motherboard ide port; the install will probably go from there. After a successful installation, you can try running the optical drive from the external enclosure. It may work OK. A lot of times these kinds of issues are caused by the needed driver modules not being available at boot time but the device works fine once the system fully boots up.