[ubuntu-za] Grub2 and other problems

[Miles]

I have a couple of old drives that give probs every now and again Bill. 
with boot-repair and http://www.supergrubdisk.org/ i manage to keep them 
going. you can even boot into the faulty ubuntu with the supergrub disk 
then reinstall grub-pc and in synaptic reinstall everything it shows if 
you type grub into the little search window at the top.  even reinstall 
mbr too. more good luck to you

> Thanks Miles - Boot-Repair does fix the Grub problem atfirst, but then 
> it comes back again. I have to assume a hardware problem.
>
>
> On 25 September 2013 20:00, Miles <msdomdonner at gmail.com 
> <mailto:msdomdonner at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     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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