Member Avatar for lowlightimages

I've done a really dumb thing: I installed Ubuntu 8.04 on a desktop & told the installer it was an AMD64 machine. The install went fine & most things work. Some don't & that's 'cos it's actually an Intel P4 :{

Is there a simple way to change th architecture, other than a full clean install?

Oh, and in the meantime, I ran the updater & it's now running 9.04.

If get the 9.04 installer & run that on the existing system, will that sort things without losing any changes I've made/software I've installed & customised?

The main problem is that Skype will not install as it, unsurprisingly, complains about "wrong architecture". Also, I can't install some of the stuff needed to display videos in Firefox for the same reason.

Any ideas gratefully received.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by icyshout

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Member Avatar for icyshout

if it installed and works then you do have a 64bit machine... it wouldnt work at all if you didnt... you cant really just switch... you'll need to reinstall the architecture you want.

Member Avatar for lowlightimages

Thanks for the response icyshout.

if it installed and works then you do have a 64bit machine... it wouldnt work at all if you didnt...

In part that's true because even a P4 Celeron (which is what's actually in the machine) will run 64 bit, AFAIR. But something I tried to install the other day (and I can't now remember what) complained about "wrong architecture" and said the OS was AMD64. So I'm assuming that the Ubuntu installer correctly figured out that this is not an AMD64 machine & installed a kernel that would work but some libraries etc are the wrong ones - in other words, it's a hybrid :{

you cant really just switch... you'll need to reinstall the architecture you want.

I realise there's no easy way to switch :) What I was wondering is if it needs to be a clean install from scratch - which would be a major nuisance - or if installing "over the top" of the existing installation would work? Or is there another way I haven't thought of?

Member Avatar for icyshout

you could do an over the top reinstall but you'd end up with weird problems that you could alleviate if you just did a fresh install.

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