Boot problem - boot sector appears not to be being read

[R C Mitchell]

I have two HDDs in my box.  The larger, let's call it Thelma, holds my 
everyday Linux system which is Ubuntu Hardy.  The smaller, which we will call 
Louise, holds a Ubuntu Intrepid installation which I installed in order to 
attempt to learn to love KDE 4.  (This is not going well so far but I'm a 
persistent kind of gal and I never give up. Well, not easily.)

I've run similar arrangements before successfully, but this time, installing 
Intrepid on Louise has caused problems with the boot process.

If I set up the BIOS to look for the boot on Thelma first, it ignores Thelma 
and passes on to Louise.  That's ok, because I have modified menu.lst on 
Louise to boot Hardy on Thelma by default, but I am concerned that any 
updates on Thelma will not be transmitted to Louise.  

The output from running %fdisk -lu is shown.  /dev/sda is Thelma and /dev/sdb 
is Louise.  The partitions seem to be intact, so I'm guessing that the 
problem lised in the Master Boot Record.  Any ideas?

============================================
Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000f0fb2

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63    19535039     9767488+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2        19535040    21494969      979965   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3        21494970   119154104    48829567+  83  Linux
/dev/sda4       119154105   625137344   252991620   83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 41.1 GB, 41110142976 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4998 cylinders, total 80293248 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa53c6d59

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *          63    19535039     9767488+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb2        19535040    21494969      979965   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb3        21494970    80292869    29398950   83  Linux
============================================

Rosie


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