On Sat, 2009-09-05 at 23:02 -0400, Vicky Staubly wrote: > 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? > My internal hard-drive is a SATA. And, no I cannot get into a shell. Something was amiss with Grub (installed to the hard drive in order to have a dual-boot configuration with XP as the alternate OS). When booting, the boot process would stop and indicated above. So, no shell is/was possible. The only way to get the computer to boot was with the Super Grub CD and then the only thing that would boot from that was XP. Even though the Super Grub CD has alternative to boot to Linux, none of those alternatives worked.
I have again rebuilt the machine this morning using the factory disks and the plan now is to install Ubuntu 8.10 and upgrade on-line and see how that goes. Rob ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
