On Tuesday 13 January 2009 08:59:02 Steve wrote: > Looking at your setup, I'd say that you put the drives back in in the wrong > order, so that sda - with the bootstrap - is now sdb. Whether you can > recover from this now, I'm not too sure. Still worth a try though (:
If that were the case wouldn't the BIOS report that there was no operating system? But he's getting as far as getting the boot loader to execute because it's saying 'GRUB'. There is a _very_ comprehensive list of GRUB error problems and their solutions here:- http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/grub-error-guide.xml IMHO David should attempt to boot his machine using a rescue CD/DVD/USB drive. Possible bootable rescue disk images can be found at:- http://www.sysresccd.org/Download http://www.giannone.eu/rescue/current/ http://www.toms.net/rb/download.html Note that last time I tried toms root and boot it would not execute the chroot command correctly. To the best of my knowledge, almost every Linux distro available now-a-days has a rescue system built-in. If that's available to you, you can, may, and should use that. imho, to start with you should boot your machine using a rescue system and check the state of the grub config file. It's usually at:-/boot/grub/menu.lst some distros use a different file name such as /boot/grub/grub.conf which might be linked to menu.lst . Have fun! > Steve > > On Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:51:32 +1300 > > David Merriman <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi all, I've got a problem which I'm unable to fix, and I need a little > > help. I've done some fiddling, and now I can't boot up my machine any > > more. Here's the background: > > > > I have two removable SATA drive bays in my PC. Normally I have two > > drives sitting in there, one with SuSE 10.3 (my normal system) and SuSE > > 11.1 on it, and the other with a single FAT32 partition with a bunch of > > video files on it. > > > > From memory (I'm at work at the moment), the partitions are set up as > > follows: > > sda1 - 1GB boot partition > > sda5 - 2GB swap > > sda6 - 30GB SuSE 11.1 (/) > > sda7 - 60GB SuSE 11.1 (/home) > > sda8 - 20GB SuSE 10.3 (/) > > sda9 - 150GB SuSE 10.3 (/home) > > sdb5 - 160GB FAT32 > > > > Last week I bought a new drive, took out the other two drives, and > > plugged this one in. I intend(ed) to use this drive as a playpen, just to > > mess about with different flavours of Linux, and so far it has PCLinuxOS, > > Mepis and Linux Mint on it. That worked fine. > > > > Later I put my original drives back in, intending to boot up SuSE 10.3 > > again, but the system stopped after the BIOS check, with the word 'GRUB' > > in the top-left corner. Now normally it says 'GRUB Loading Stage 1.5' (I > > think), and half the time it will hang at that point anyway, requiring a > > reboot, but it's always done that (that may be a symptom in itself). > > This time it just said 'GRUB', and stopped. > > > > I assumed that GRUB or some part of the boot sequence had got corrupted > > (don't ask me how, the drives were just sitting on the desk until I > > plugged them back in...), so I booted off my SuSE 11.1 DVD, selected > > 'Boot from hard disk', and was then able to boot from the hard disk as > > usual. > > > > I then tried using the recovery utilities on the DVD to fix the boot > > issue, and that's when things started to get worse. I first ran the > > automatic recovery utility; it said some part of the boot sequence was > > incorrect, and attempted to fix it. I was still unable to boot, so then > > I tried the manual recovery method, trying various combinations of > > booting from the Master Boot Record, from the boot partition, the root > > partition, rewriting the MBR, etc. etc. Long story short, no matter what > > I tried it wouldn't boot up, and now I'm at the point where I can't boot > > at all, and I'm stuck. > > > > I wasted over 3 hours on it last night, and I've exhausted my admittedly > > limited knowledge (and patience). Short of reinstalling, I dont' know > > what else to try, so I'm hoping that one of you kind souls will be able > > to have a look at this machine for me, and hopefully get it back into a > > working state. I'm happy to pay for your time in whatever fashion you > > prefer, money, blank disks, whatever. > > > > If anyone is able to help, I'd be most grateful. As I say, I'm at work > > at the moment, so I can't run any commands on the machine for you, but > > I'll try and answer any other questions you may have. > > > > Thanks, > > David Merriman > > -- > > Hardware: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked. -- With Sincerity, Christopher Sawtell
