Strange Grub Error Message on dual boot Dell laptop

[sam]

On 04/23/2010 03:21 PM, Tab Gilbert wrote:
> Hello-
>
> I have a dual boot laptop with Vista (only for iThingies) and Ubuntu.
> Vista had a security upgrade and after it finished I got the following
> error message when restarting the machine.
>
> Grub Loading
> Ho :) Not Found ?YL
> Aborted Press ??*1?
> Any key to exit.
>
> The smiley face is more like a little emoticon type symbol.
> The * is more like a little star emoticon.
>
> I do not know squat about grub and really do not want to mess with it so
> I installed Ubuntu again.  Well, Vista uses the slow upgrade method and
> it took three Ubuntu installs before Vista was finished.  I turned off
> all updates in Vista since the only thing I use is iTunes and never even
> open a browser.  Problem solved.
>
> However, the last time I used iTunes and rebooted I get the same error
> message.  So I installed the new Ubuntu Beta 2 figuring it was as good
> as time as any to see how it works on the Dell laptop.  Works great,
> btw. I googled around and could not find anything with this type of
> error message and did a post to this list the first time it happened but
> got no real response.  I have learned that if you do not format the
> Ubuntu partition it basically just install the system and leaves
> everything else where it was.  I have gotten rather good a installing my
> whole Ubuntu setup in pretty good time from start to finish.
>
> Any suggestions, hints or places to look for answers.  Thanks.
>
> tab
I actually have the same problem on a client machine I am testing (HP), 
I can reboot the Lucid partition as much as I like, but after booting 
into windows and restarting, I get an error similar to the OP's. My 
question is: Is there a parameter in grub2 that has recently changed to 
automatically default to the last booted partition? No software has run 
on the windows side, certainly not anything that would affect grub.

Sam