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[ubuntu] Changed permission and bricked my computer, can't even reboot

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http://ubuntuforums.org – I was trying to install a copy of windows 7 on another hard drive using an iso and mounting it as a bootable flash. When I mounted the iso to the flash drive it gave a warning that the flash drive was read only. Using my VAST (not really...) knowledge of ubuntu, I opened that folder in terminal and typed in something along the lines of sudo chmod 754 / assuming that I would be pointing to my current directory. (might not have been exactly this, but the issue remains that my permissions are royally screwed up. It immediately exited me out of my browser and changes all image icons to ei (Hardware)

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Submitted by dayu on 09/21/2012

Stories similar to [ubuntu] Changed permission and bricked my computer, can't even reboot

I have downloaded the Ubuntu 12.10 image, but I cannot install it.

I've tried burning it to a pen drive, but when I reboot with it in place, it just boots into Windows!

Welcome back to the daring adventures of TalkUbuntu! Here is the lowdown:

As i'm sure you can tell i'm new to this forum, im on my first cup of Ubuntu if you will. So if you would kindly help me out, i'm sure I will come to get used to the new OS I have chosen. Getting to the point, my problem is that I have no memory to install any of the essentials such as adobe flash.

I tried making a boot-able flash drive like described in the install guide, here, on the wiki.Using Unetbootin - did it - didn't boot from the flash drive (just doesn't work).I thought: Hei, I'll do it again maybe I did something wrong.No way - my flash drive is now 8MB (and it was a 32GB FLASH DRIVE!!).I tried everything, fdisk, diskpart in windows, Killdisk ...

I have an Alienware m17x R1 computer with dual Nvidia geforce 260m graphics cards and 1 Nvideo 9400, 16GB Ram, 1 750GB drive (Drive C) and 1 500GB drive (Drive D).

I spent 2-days doing a new install of Win-7, reinstalling all my apps, and tuing the system so it was fast and reliable.

I'm new to Linux.

This is a problem I'm having when using Ubuntu: I have two computers that have Ubuntu installed on them (comp1 and comp2). I create a document with Ubuntu on comp1 and then copy the file onto a FAT formatted USB flash drive. Via the flash drive I paste the document onto comp2. The problem is that the file-permissions are never preserved during the transfer.

I tried instaling Ubuntu onto my flash drive by booting onto a live CD of 9.10 and using the create a bootable USB disk option. Ubuntu was bootable from my drive, but I didn't like it. I reinstalled the U3 system and chose the format option. It went through, but the drive never renamed.

So basically I installed Windows 8 and have not found it a decent OS, to my chagrin when I tried to install the latest Ubuntu via flash, the flash drive wouldn't load. It just went to the windows 8 startup page. I changed the boot settings and everything, any thoughts?

NOTE: Flash drive created from uncompressing the iso onto my flash drive via 7zip.

I'd like to fully install Ubuntu 12.10 onto a 16GB USB 3.0 flash drive, not create a live USB but to treat the flash drive as an external hard drive. I've read it's possible and I know my computer can boot from it. However, it doesn't work when I try. I've booted a Live USB from another flash drive and installed Ubuntu onto the 16GB one.