new install 10.4 won't boot

[Madds]

Hi - I'll start with an apology for being a clueless newbie... I've just tried 3 fresh installs (on 2 different hdd) of 10.4 on a fairly old pc without a cd drive, using a bootable pen drive. LIVE runs fine, and after installing I can reboot to the hdd provided I leave the pen drive in and select 'boot from first hdd'. If I remove the pen drive I can't boot, I get a no system disk error. I think maybe I should be installing/repairing a boot manager, but don't know what or how... Please help - I'm so stuck!

[-humanaut-]

Where are you installing Grub? Try installing it to the MBR also what kind of message do you get when you bootup with out the pen drive? and from the live media open a terminal and post the results back of this
cat /etc/fstab

[Madds]

Hi - thanks for helping! The error I get is: 'disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter'. I haven't installed Grub unless it was done automatically during the install. I'm on a win pc right now (sorry!) - I'll reboot the other one and try the terminal command you suggest, then reply again from that one!

[Yvan300]

Most likely GRUB has been installed on the pendrive instead of the flash drive. I don't know how it happened, but that might explain why you could only boot fine while the flash drive is connected to your pc. What i suggest you do is to install ubuntu and on the last step of the installation process, it asks you where you wish to install grub, select hd0.0 and that should do it...... not sure if it will be hd0.0, but you get the idea!

[Madds]

I'm on the ubuntu live cd nw, and what I get is this:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ cat /etc/fstab
aufs / aufs rw 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs nosuid,nodev 0 0
/dev/sda5 swap swap defaults 0 0

[Madds]

Hi Yvan - I don't think it asked me where I wanted to install Grub! Is there a way of doing it from where I am now, ie running the live cd from pendrive? BTW it's just a single boot, so I suppose hd0.0 would be right.

[Yvan300]

On the last step, where the button is marked as "install", there is a advanced button, click that and it would allow you to choose where to install grub.....

[Madds]

Thanks - I'll try again and give that a go. I'll let you know how I get on!

[Yvan300]

Hope it works, and welcome to ubuntu my friend !

[Madds]

Sadly, no go... The options I was given under the boot loader were just /dev/sda (maxtor 40gb) or /dev/sda1 (ubuntu 10.4). The previous installs I left it on the default (hdd) so this time I tried the other one - and it didn't like it. I'm just rebooting to the live cd now...

Tried installing from an actual cd too - still won't boot from hdd, same error: 'disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter'. Only 2 options to choose for boot loader install and neither works.

Could anyone please give me step by step instructions to instal Grub from the live cd? I've tried following some from other threads but never seem to get the expected result, eg sudo grub gives me a command not found.

I've installed ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10 successfully before (tho' not on this machine) - should I give up and go back to one of those?

thanks