[Klug-general] MEETING: Dover Saturday 27th September

[Wayne]

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:34:55 +0100 (GMT+01:00)
"rich-ayres at tiscali.co.uk" <rich-ayres at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi 
>          Hopefully I will be there. (Partner is Planning Holiday not
> finalised yet. Sorry but I have another problem. A couple of days ago
> while making a grub boot disc as advised on a web page, I seem to be
> unable to boot my PC any more. Initially it just hung just before the
> boot menu. But having fished out Xmas Linux Format and tried a grub
> repair. The example is for two partitions on the same disk, but  I
> have windows XP on sda  and Ubuntu on sdb. Using the Ubuntu install
> disc I mounted  /dev/sda1 on /mnt  and tried various options that
> seemed appropriate (I know I should record what I have done - lesson
> learned) but the net result is that the message "Grub loading
> stage1.5" is displayed in an endless loop. very pretty but not what I
> wanted. I was just going to reinstall ubuntu, but ......... I have
> also failed miserably to save my home directories to dvd being
> baffled by a mass of options which mean nothing to me. If anyone can
> offer a solution (with a short explanation would be nice) I would
> again be grateful What started out as Fun has become a real Pain in
> the you know what. Help before I tear out what's left of my hair!!
> Rich

Hi Rich,

The important thing is not to panic and do anything rash! 
There is a great tool I use called super grub boot disk 
http://www.supergrubdisk.org/
It appears they also do a version for floppy too.

The tool aims to not only help repair a screwed up mbr but also to
teach you as it goes, it'll recognise the installed OS's and give you
options on fixing it.

You seem to be trying to fix the install by booting from a live cd,
there is a way to do this but it's not quite as simple as it first
appears, check this thread out:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=224351
It talks about how the grub command may not find the correct partitions
if you do not use a 'chroot' environment as explaned within the thread.

For my money I would try the supergrub disk fix above, either way I
hope this helps you.


 
Cheers,

Wayne.