"Grub loading ...Error 18" - HD's not accessible any more. (Kubuntu Karmic/ WinXP)

[Bas Roufs]

Hello Goh-Lip

I hope, you have had a good dinner. My lunch was perfecty OK :-).
With respect to the situation in your country Malaysia as well as in
Thailand: it's being reported and analysed via the mass-media here. I
wish you much wisdom!

> The livecd output of fdisk and blkid shows sdb to be kubuntu and sda as
> windows. But with grub cd, it is not and it is the opposite. Your above
> message shows (hd0,1), which is sda1 as the kubuntu 7.10 partition.
> Your kubuntu 9.10 should therefore be either sda6 or sda7 or (hd0,6) or
> (hd0,7). The bad news is that /vmlinuz does not exists for your 9.10.
> But we can still boot this up by using the kernel numbers.

Some tests at the live CD did show both hard disks, but others showed
only the 80GB disk with the Windows partition - indicated there as
"sda".

> Please verify by using the grub rescue cd and at grub prompt, please
> type the following and show the output for each. (yes, the first is "ls"
> only)
>
> ls
Here is the output from 'ls', including the empty spaces inbetween the
characters:
grub> ls
(hd0) (hd0, 8) (hd0, 7) (hd0, 6) (hd0, 5) (hd0, 1) (hd1) (hd1, 5)
(hd1, 1) (hd111) (fd0)
grub> <here blinkering cursor>

> ls (hd0,6)/boot/
With empty space after "hd0":
grub> ls (hd0, 6)/boot
error: unknown filesystem
Without empty space after "hd0":
grub> ls (hd0,6)
error: no such partition.
grub> <here blinkering cursor>

> ls (hd0,7)/boot/
With empty space after "hd0":
grub> ls (hd0, 7)/boot
error: no such disk.
Without empty space after "hd0":
grub> ls (hd0,7)
error: unknown filesystem
grub> <here blinkering cursor>

> ls (hd0,1)/boot/
With empty space after "hd0":
grub: (hd0, 1)/boot/
error: no such disk.

Output generated without empty space after "hd0":
(When I see an <empty space> between two characters, I indicate it as
follows: "<s>"

System.map-2.6.22-14-generic<s>abi-2.6.22-14-generic<s>config-2.6.22-14-generic<s>initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic.bak
memtest86+.<s>bin<s>
vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic<s>initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic<s>grub/<s>System.map-2.6.22-15-generic<s>vmlinuz-2.6.22-15-generic<s>config-2.6.22-15-generic
abi-2.6.22-15-generic<s>initrd.img-2.6.22-15-generic<s>initrd.img-2.6.6.22-15-generic.bak


> Also please type
> cat (hd0,6)/etc/lsb-release
With empty space after "hd0":
grub> cat (hd0,6)/etc/lsb-release
error: file name required


Without empty space after "hd0":
grub> cat (hd0,6)/etc/lsb-release
error: file not found.
grub> <here blinkering cursor>

> cat (hd0,7)/etc/lsb-release
With empty space after "hd0":
grub>  cat (hd0, 7)/etc/lsb-release
error: file name required.

Without empty space after "hd0":
grub>  cat (hd0,7)/etc/lsb-release
error: no such partition.

> cat (hd0,1)/etc/lsb-release
With empty space after "hd0":
grub>  cat (hd0, 1)/etc/lsb-release
error: file name required.

Without empty space after "hd0":
grub>  cat (hd0,1)/etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=7.10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=GUTSY
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 7.10"
grub> (here blinkering cursor)

All this implies that there is some problem at the Kubuntu 9.10 partition.....
Respectfully yours,

Bas.