Can't boot notebook from SSD

[MR ZenWiz]

On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 12:37 PM, MR ZenWiz <mrzenwiz at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 12:21 PM, MR ZenWiz <mrzenwiz at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> No joy.  It still comes up in BusyBox after timing out on the boot.
>> Problem is now, even with quiet deleted and nosplash in Grub, I can't
>> see what happened, though I suspect it's the same problem - it can't
>> find the boot drive by UUID.  It shows the Xubuntu 16.04 "text" in the
>> middle of the screen with the flashing dot sequence, then drops into
>> BusyBox with no output as to why.
>>
>> I'm ready to give up on it and just live with the slow hard drive,
>> though it really seems pathetic.  I can't even use the SSD anywhere
>> else - no other computers that need it.  Hope I can sell it....
>
> I disabled UEFI boot and this time it came up and showed me the
> sequence again before dropping into BusyBox.  Same issue - it can't
> find the drive.  I did a cat /proc/modules and that was emtpy.  ls
> /dev shows too much for the screen, but one thing missing is anything
> under /dev/sd* - there are no disks, including the hard drive that the
> boot PROM recognized (but ignored as a boot device, as instructed).
>
> It does mention something about missing modules, but not which.  Is
> there a module I need to boot from an SSD that's not part of the
> distro?  That might explain it.  If so, how do I get and install it
> into the boot image?
>
> Thanks.

I tried explicitly setting the root='hd0,msdo1', which _is_ the root
partition, I tried hd(0,0) (old style spec from way back), I tried all
of the "Other" Ubuntu boot opeionts (generic, upstart and recovery) -
all get the same result.

Apparently the initramfs image does not recognize the SSD as a boot
drive and refuses to load anything.

If there's a solution, someone please let me know.  I'm going back to
the hard drive for now.