Serious GRUB booting problem after install Ubuntu 9.10beta for testing it.

[Goh Lip]

Goh Lip wrote:
> Joseph Cooper wrote:
>> OK, your help is much appreciated. If anyone can help with the other 
>> questions, that would also be a great help; I have yet to try the 
>> suggestion given as my first live CD did not appear to work so I am 
>> burning another.
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 10:48 PM, Rashkae <ubuntu at tigershaunt.com 
>> <mailto:ubuntu at tigershaunt.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     Joseph Cooper wrote:
>>      > Thank you very much for your reply Rashkae. In that case, will
>>     the Karmic
>>      > beta CD not be able to do this as it uses Grub 2? That's what I'm
>>     running
>>      > from now, it's the only live CD I have on me as I have just moved
>>     up to
>>      > university and made the terrible mistake of leaving my stack of
>>     live CDs in
>>      > my home country! I'm going to try booting Karmic from the flash
>>     drive I just
>>      > formatted with USB-Creator and then burning a fresh Mint CD.
>>      >
>>      > For future reference, is there something I did wrong that caused
>>     my MBR to
>>      > be overwritten? As far as I knew I wasn't touching my internal
>>     drive and was
>>      > entirely working with my external. But Ubiquity seems to have
>>     changed and
>>      > did the partitioning earlier than I expected which caught me out and
>>      > required me to backtrack.
>>      >
>>      >
>>
>>     I doubt grub 2 will repair a Grub 1 installation.  It is more likely it
>>     will try to replace all the grub files with itself.  In theory, that
>>     should work fine, but I'm not familiar enough with Either Grub 2 or the
>>     Ubuntu GUI install to answer any of your questions.  I only suggested
>>     the easiest way for you to return to familiar footing.
>>
>>     --
>>     ubuntu-users mailing list
>>     ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com <mailto:ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
>>     Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
>>     https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
>>
>>
> Joseph, I am not familiar with Linux Mint, but if it has a livecd
> and if it is based on ubuntu 9.04 and if it is on grub-legacy, then
> 
> boot up on livecd, open a terminal,
> 
> $ sudo grub
>  >grub find /boot/grub/stage1    ## do not type '>grub' ##
> 
> ## this will output all/any partitions with grub-legacy say, (hd0,x).
> 
> then
>  >grub root (hd0,x)      #### whatever that 'x' was for your linux mint##
>  >grub setup (hd0)
>  >grub quit
> 
> 
> You're done.
> 
> Reboot without livecd.
> 
> Oh, if you want to install any Linux OS on external drive, and you want 
> it to be mobile, do NOT overide MBR, install grub at external drive 
> itself. During installation, after you've set manual partitioning, there 
> is an "advance" button, set grub at sdb, (taking care it really is sdb, 
> if you've other drives connected as well).
> To boot external drive, most bios now let you boot from external by 
> pressing either Esc, F8, F10 or F12. (find what that is in your computer)
> 
> Regards,
> Goh Lip
> 
> ps: if you've grub2, instead of grub-legacy, follow Tom's instructions.


Joe, if you don't have live cd handy, just google and download 
grub-legacy iso , (make sure it is not grub2; just a few MB) and boot.
Then do the ">grub" things.