Strange Grub Error Message on dual boot Dell laptop

[NoOp]

Tab Gilbert wrote:
...
> 
> The problem I have is when it comes to partitions and their naming structure
> is I tend to glaze over.  Started originally as a Mac person way back.  It
> is only due to the improvements in the partition manager during the
> installation phase I even feel comfortable doing dual boot installs.  Before
> that it was a trip to "The Hack of All Trades" for a little assistance.  I
> did nuke two of the three DataSafe applications while in safe mode and will
> see what happens.  Installing grub2 in a separate partition will certain
> require a trip to the Hack.  I would really rather do almost anything than
> having to install vista again.
> 
> I would like to thank everyone for all of their assistance.  You folks have
> been a great help and I sincerely appreciate it.  It is just such a strange
> error message that I was stumped on how to even google for some leads.

Well, don't feel alone :-) I was hit by
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/496435
[upgrades of the grub-pc package can overwrite wrong MBR]
this morning. But it was my fault & easily fixed on my system. My issue
wasn't the same as yours however.

I've a dual boot system (WinXP on sda) where sdb and sda are swapped in
bios & mapped so that grub uses sdb (Ubuntu) to boot. when I was
upgrading the system to lucid last night I shut down before the upgrade
completed (on purpose as the machine is in a bedroom & didn't want to
listen to it all night long). I knew that I'd have issues that needed to
be fixed in the morning.

When I booted this morning I got as far as:
  symbol 'grub_puts' not found
  grub-recover >
Rather than trying to fix the issue in grub-recover (possible as I've
done it on another system) I rebooted into a 10.04 liveCD and
reinstalled grub to sdb. That worked fine.

In the Dell cases; I still think that a good workaround (until the issue
is properly fixed) might be to install grub2 to a separate partition.
Maybe after Goh Lip get's his beauty rest he can have a look :-)