Comment 40 for bug 365881

@BB,

i also made several wrong guesses about what was causing the issue...i also installed blank CDs in my drives (lol)...then finally someone else pointed out the issue with card readers.

@others,
it appears that the wubi script is scanning all "drives" on the PC (windows treats card reader slots as drives on my machine) and is not able to deal elegantly with the card reader slots -- if they are empty.

i have 4 card reader slots and i have to click "continue" 12 times total (8 times at the beginning of the installation and 4 times somerewhere in the middle)...so that is 3 times per card reader slot. (all my card reader slots have normal ascii character names like drive M:).

WORKAROUNDS...
one can successfully install ubuntu by merely clicking thru the error messages 12 or so times OR by "ejecting" the card-reader (eject by right-clicking the card-reader's icon in the systray, then clicking on "safely remove hardware", then clicking on "stop")

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE BUG (PROGRAMMING-WISE)...
i am not knowledgeable of python (i dabble in C#), but i did scan the python code and it seems to have some code that tries to check the letters A-Z to see if any of those letters are valid drives. I think that could be the source of the first 4 errors. Then i think i saw some code that scans all drives for an available ubuntu image...so that's probably where the second set of 4 errors originates...i don't know about the last 4 times, though...i didn't look too far into the script. however, the wubi script itself may not be so much to blame as the underlying python libraries (i googled and googled and it seems hard to find documentation on python methods that allow access to system drive information on a windows machine)...but perhaps python provides a way to catch the error...kinda like a try-catch block in C#??? (again, i am not familiar with python...so i may be way off base). Could the errors somehow originate from the instantiation and/or use of the Drive class objects??? (just some thoughts)

unfortunately...
if one is not aware of the card reader issue, after clicking "continue" on the error message 3 or 4 times, one naturally feels the computer is in some kind of infinite loop. this could potentially cause first-time users to think the ubuntu installation program is defective (that's what i thought at first) or has some compatibility issue with their PC...when, in fact, they simply have empty card reader slots.