Grub errors....

Discussion in 'Software' started by moominboy, Nov 8, 2005.

  1. moominboy

    moominboy Gigabyte Poster

    oh what a joyous day i've had today folks, as i've mentioned before, my network set-up sometimes requires a reboot to connect for some strange reason but thats what i did this morning and upon reboot......grub error at stage 1.5.

    not having a clue what this was, no mention in my many books and no internet i had to leave it at "loading grub stage(or words to that effect) please wait"

    so came home from work, and same screen, rebooted again and again, no luck.

    now, last night i was mucking around with the partitions on e: drive which has the ubuntu install on it, and was getting error messages from that but i wouldn't think this would affect c: ?

    just in case i disconnected e: to try c:on it's own which has the xp insstall on it. no luck, same error.

    tried the repair disc a few times and even though it went through the repair process fully would not let me boot, one different grub error though, 20 i think.

    have now finished a full re-install of xp on c: and i'm sure there will be a few posts which make me kick my own ass hard and fast but while im trying to rebuild what i used to have, can anyone help with explaining wtf went on?

    i should say that on boot,everything looks fine but looks like a slow boot, ie:i can see the manufacturers logo and bios options then straight to grub error.

    i'm sure this is very long-winded and slightly sparse on info but i'm pretty stressed at the minute!

    thanks for any help/info folks. :tongue :cry:



    Dave
     
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  2. Neall

    Neall Byte Poster

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    http://www.uruk.org/orig-grub/errors.html

    Grub is the bootloader for dual booting windows and linux.
    There are loads of reasons why this could have stopped working.

    Neall

    EDIT: Didnt really give you much info on this.
    Basically, its the list you choose what OS to boot into. Sometimes when for example, the partition the bootloader is on gets damaged, grub fails to load properly, therefore you are not able to boot into an OS.

    Im not sure about repairing this as i have not had much experience.
    Maybe repairing the linux installation may have solved it.

    Neall
     
    WIP: A+
  3. moominboy

    moominboy Gigabyte Poster

    so i may have inadvertently corrupted the grub whilst mucking around?

    i will read your link neall but could a full re-install have been avoided?

    ta mate! :tongue
     
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  4. Neall

    Neall Byte Poster

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    Yeah, you could have depending on what the mucking around was.

    If Grub was installed on the Windows Partition then you could have tried this;

    FIXMBR C:
    FIXBOOT C:
    COPY CDDrive:\I386\NTLDR C:\
    COPY CDDrive:\I386|NTDETECT.COM C:\
    BOOTCFG /rebuild.

    And this might have got you back into windows XP. Then you could have booted your linux installation cd and tried a repair. This might install grub too your Linux partition thus getting you the bootloader again.
    I know some Linux distro's have an automatic repair or a manual repair in which you can choose to just install/repair the grub bootloader.

    As i say i haven't had much experience with linux so... :)

    Neall
     
    WIP: A+
  5. moominboy

    moominboy Gigabyte Poster

    if i'd have known that grub was to do with dual boot i would've tried both cd's but i didn't so...! :tongue

    i just assumed that as no option to pick an os came up and i couldn't get to my default os then it was windows' partition and panicked a wee bit.

    just another thing that has came from this, i now cannot find my other hard drive at all! i've tried taking it out and back in, and searching for it's files but no luck any clues?
     
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  6. Neall

    Neall Byte Poster

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    When you say find, do you mean you cannot see it in Windows 'My Computer' or is it not even picked up in the bios?

    Whats on your other HDD... Linux?

    Neall
     
    WIP: A+
  7. Bluerinse
    Honorary Member

    Bluerinse Exabyte Poster

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    Sounds to me like you are just starting to learn Linux Moom. It is when things don't work that we learn. I haven't really learnt much yet about Linux because my SimplyMepis worked straight away. I didn't even have to configure or install anything. I could surf the net using Firefox from the word go. Now this sounds good and it is for a casual user but it didn't teach me a single thing. I didn't even have to install any applications, as there were more than enough already installed. This is the downside IMHO.

    What you are going through now is great. I have heard you mention Grub for the first time. It's ironic that now your installation has gone pear shaped, you are beginning to learn.

    When you have worked out how Grub works and how to repair it's boot loader config, please let us know :biggrin
     
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  8. moominboy

    moominboy Gigabyte Poster

    either mate but i've found it now, took it out, re-booted fine. put it back, new hardware found!

    but....linux has vanished so god knows what i've done!

    last night i was trying to resize the partitions but the same error at the same time kept coming up.

    thanks blurinse, i'm going to re-install ubuntu tomorrow because tonight hasn't been fun for me! thank god i remembered to write down all my serial numbers at least, and backed up some of my files so it's not all bad!

    i will report on how i get on because i think im going to intentionally break it this time! :twisted:


    driver before hardware/ learn before breaking?! lol! cheers guys! :tongue
     
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  9. ffreeloader

    ffreeloader Terabyte Poster

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    Linux hasn't vanished.

    Burn yourself a Knoppix disk if you don't have one. Then boot into Knoppix and from there you can install grub again. I've done it so I know it works on a dual-boot machine.

    I can't give you all the exact steps to do it off the top of my head as I did this a few months ago, but it will work. The O'Reilly book, Knoppix Hacks, will give you the step-by-step instructions on how to go about doing it. Or, you can probably find a set of instructions for this doing some Googling.
     
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  10. fig_jam_uk

    fig_jam_uk Bit Poster

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    the GRUB boot loader was peobably fine but with changing the partitions you may have inavertanatly added or removed a partition
    hence changing the partition GRUB was on so the loader could not find it anymore. but not to worry i have done the same kind of thing myself in the past.

    you have 2 options realy
    1 reinstall GRUB
    2 reinstall LINUX

    if you go for door number 2 the check this out http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=68320
    this will allow you to back up all your perssonal files from linux before reinstall..

    hope this helps...
     
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  11. moominboy

    moominboy Gigabyte Poster

    thanks figjam but linux really wasn't on long enough to have anything important on it , it was as i said before on this thread, i panicked and re-installed xp....over everything!
     
    Certifications: ECDL
    WIP: A+

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