[ubuntu-za] Grub2 and other problems

[Bill Cairns]

Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions. Eventually I became
convinced that my 160 GB hard drive was giving all kinds of strop and
installed instead on the 500 GB drive - I did not want to because it meant
backing up a lot of backup files ... But since I did it I have installed
fine and everything looks good. Hold thumbs.

Bill


On 26 September 2013 15:10, Bill Cairns <cairnsww at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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> 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
>>
>> --
>> ubuntu-za mailing list
>> ubuntu-za at lists.ubuntu.com
>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-za
>>
>>
>
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