[ubuntu-za] Grub2 and other problems

[Miles]

On 25/09/2013 16:18, Bill Cairns wrote:
> I have being trying to get my 5 year old Mecer machine going again (it 
> has been sitting gathering dust for a few months). But I seem to go 
> back two steps for every one forward.
>
> This machine used to run 10.04 with no problems. I had two hard disks  
> - a 160 GB drive (sdb) which I had partitioned sdb1 = root, sdb2 = 
> swap and sdb3 = home. Then a 500 GB drive (sda) that I used as backup 
> storage.
>
> I started off trying to install Ubuntu 12.10 because that is a disk 
> that I had easily available.  It ran beautifully in live mode.
>
> The installation took forever - it seemed to get stuck downloading 
> updates to my existing packages. So I repeated the installation 
> without connecting to the Internet.
>
> Again the installation seemed to go fine, but the machine booted to 
> the point of asking for my password - it then refused to accept my 
> password and would not go any further. OK so perhaps I mistyped my 
> password or had a senior moment or something, so I re-installed. Same 
> thing.
>
> Hm. So I repeated the installation except this time I told it to 
> format sdb1. Things went better and the machine accepted my password 
> this time. In fact everything looked good and I thought that I had a 
> working Ubuntu system. So I thought it was time to install all the 
> updates that were missing. That took a few hours.
>
> But now I had a new problem. The Unity GUI kept on just vanishing - 
> the icons on the left and the tool bar on the top just vanished 
> leaving me a completely useless machine. Sure, I could get a terminal 
> window by CTl-ALT-T, but the terminal would not accept anything that I 
> typed. I had to push the power button to shut the machine down and 
> when I started it up again, the GUI vanished within seconds of my 
> logging in.
>
> I decided to cut my losses and start again. So I downloaded Xubuntu 
> 13.04 and tried it in live mode. It worked perfectly - I was 
> particularly impressed that it found my wireless card and used it 
> without problems whereas previously I had had to compile the driver. I 
> installed and the installation went through. But on booting, I got the 
> message "
>
> no such device d42bef6d ....
> grub-rescue>
>
> This is the point at which I am still stuck. I have Googled this and 
> followed instructions to restore Grub, but get a variety of error 
> messages depending on the sequence that I follow. I have tried telling 
> the installer to forget the existing partitions on sdb and to use the 
> whole drive - no change. I still get the "no such device" message.
>
> I am tearing my hair. How can a new installation not be able to find Grub?
>
> I am beginning to assume that I must have a hardware error. Any 
> suggestions?
>
> Thanks,
>   Bill
>
>
>
>
Hi Bill, I fix all boot-probs with a too called boot-repair,
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

Hope this helps you. Good luck.
Miles
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