On Sat, 5 Sep 2009, Rob wrote:
I posted this on an Ubuntu Linux list I subscribe to earlier today but
I've not yet gotten any useful responses. So, I thought I post it here
on the chance someone may be able to help. Here's hoping...
[...]
Ok...here's a brain teaser.
I have tried twice now to install Ubuntu 9.04 to a Win XP box with the
following results.
Installation Attempt #1
The install appears to proceed normally to an external 500 Gig drive
(brand new) with Grub installed to HD0. Previous installations like
this (to an older external drive) with Grub installed to HD0 worked
fine. However, upon reboot after the Ubuntu installation, the system
halted on Grub error 15. Fortunately, we had burned a Super Grub CD a
little over a year ago and that allowed me to boot to XP but not to
Ubuntu on the external drive. Thinking it may be something unique to my
machine (an IBM/Lenovo), we called them since we have have on-site
coverage. The technician came and installed a new motherboard (don't
know how he determined that was a problem but so be it.) We rebuilt the
machine with the factory disks that came with it and I ran XP only for
about a week before attempting to install Ubuntu again earlier today.
Installation Attempt # 2
Again, the installation appears to be proceeding normally to the
external 500 Gig drive with Grub installed to HD0. Once again, after
installation completes and the machine is rebooted the following is
observed:
GRUB Loading Stage 1.5
GRUB Loading, please wait
Error 2
My only alternative is to reboot using the Super Grub CD to run
XP. Would anyone have any ideas what may be going wrong here. BTW the
Ubuntu CD I am using came from Linux Format magazine so it was not
downloaded or burned by me and I have no reason to suspect it is faulty.
Is your internal hard-drive IDE or SATA? I ask because Linux seems
to assign both USB and SATA drivers as pseudo-SCSI (i.e. /dev/sda,
/dev/sdb, etc.), and I'm wondering if your external drive might be
showing up as /dev/sda during install, but as /dev/sdb when you're
trying to boot from Grub on the internal drive.
When booting from the Super Grub CD, can you get into a shell? If so,
cat you send the contents of /etc/grub.conf (or grub.lst which I think
is what Ubuntu uses (I use Fedora)). And maybe /etc/fstab?
--
Vicky Staubly http://www.steeds.com/vicky/ [email protected]
*************************************************************************
** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy **
** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ **
*************************************************************************
