I just recently bought a Lenovo z570, and for some reason the LiveCD has garbled text. I tried using Ubuntu 12.04 (amd64) Desktop/LiveCD (CD version). The text appears straight after trying to boot the CD, and it appears to not be rendering to the screen correctly. Possibly a graphics issue, since the laptop contains both an nVidia and an Intel card that is swappable with a soft-hardware switch, and in the UEFI/BIOS. Note: using the switch, and changing the UEFI/BIOS option didn't help.
Tried booting from USB, with no joy... but this could be because one of two things: Either a) the configuration used for the bootable USB drive I have*; or b) the fact that the Lenovo z570 has an (U)EFI BIOS, and this bootable USB was created (tested and working) on a regular BIOS (legacy) system.
Please look at the information I've provided below.
- I would like to know if it is possible to install Ubuntu to my system?
- Why am I getting garbled text and how can I proceed?
- Are there any specific changes I need to do?
If it helps, this is what I know about the laptop:
- Contains a (U)EFI instead of a legacy BIOS. This is based on information found on the internet (e.g. Lenovo Forum).
- Contains 4 partitons: 200MB (NTFS, System, Active, Primary), 654.69GB (NTFS, Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary, Contains Windows 7), 29GB (NTFS, Logical, Contains Drivers/OEM Apps, Label: LENOVO), 14.75GB (unknown filesystem, OEM Partition, used for OneKey Recovery).
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (OEM) is preloaded.
- Despite using (U)EFI, Windows is preloaded in legacy mode! This is checked using a tool called "bcdedit" in Windows 7 which results in the "Windows Boot Loader" saying the path is "windowssystem32winload.exe", this should show "winload.efi" if it was booted in EFI mode.
- The HDD is partitioned using MBR instead of GPT.
Some of the Specs.:
- Intel Core i7-2670QM (2.20GHz)
- Intel HD Graphics 3000
- nVidia GeForce GT 540M
- CUDA/Optimus configuration graphics.
- 750GB HDD
- 6GB RAM
Side Note: I have a feeling the CUDA/Optimus configuration is where the problem lies, however I must point out that I did change this in the (U)EFI/BIOS/CMOS from Optimus to UMA (or the internal Intel graphics card). Neither way allows me to boot the CD without the garbled text.
*Configuration of the bootable USB drive:
- Ext3 filesystem.
- Bunch of ubuntu iso files (i.e. 10.04 to 12.04, both i386 and amd64) in a subdirectory called "iso". This is so I can install it anywhere, anytime, or to use as a LiveUSB on any machine for diagnostics, tweaks or fixes.
- Grub2 bootloader.
- Chain-loading the iso files (or iso loopback).
- grub.cfg manually configured each time a new iso is added.
