OK here is the update. After the poweroff and restart the Toshiba logo comes up (it's a Toshiba Tecra A9) and then it goes straight to booting linux without ever showing the grub menu as described above.
However, it seems that grub IS actually running invisibly when the Toshiba logo is showing but it just can't get hold of the screen. I tested this by using the down arrow and pressing enter to boot into windows instead of linux. So, whatever part of the system attempts to display the grub menu to the screen doesn't work after a poweroff (-P), but does work after a restart (-r). Any ideas how to tackle this? Looks like maybe the BIOS is not initialising something properly, at a guess. -- grub menu skipped after shutdown https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/389930 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
