Running Ubuntu after transferring hard disk into another computer?

[FlameReaper]

Just wondering, I had Ubuntu installed on my laptop using Wubi. Then today I transferred the hard disk of the laptop into another laptop of the same model - except that it uses an AMD Turion64 TL-56 x2 1.8GHz, whereas the laptop I took it out from is using an AMD Turion64 TL-58 x2 1.9GHz.

What I would like to know is that is it possible for me to select and run Ubuntu when I come across the OS selection menu? There's the OS selection menu and GRUB2 loads letting me do a selection of OSes to load... yet I tried, but I can't load anything. The boot process seems to just stop there and does not show any sign of proceeding. The Plymouth splash screen does not show up, and the CPU light indicates it is not loading anything.

Do I have to reconfigure anything to make it work again as it should, now that I've put it in another laptop? Hardware specifications are pretty much the same except for the processor. I'm using an Acer Aspire 4520 by the way.

EDIT: The above problem was fixed somehow, with this error below unresolved but still being able to boot...

                                                 [    2.270262] ieee1394: Host added: ID:BUS[0-00:1023]  GUID[00241b0056341200]
[    6.370036] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[   11.350035] ata1: device not ready (errno=-16), forcing hardreset
[   16.550035] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[   21.410034] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[   26.610033] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[   31.470034] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[   36.670034] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[   66.490034] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[   71.510034] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[   71.510037] ata1: reset failed, giving up
[   71.510109] ata2: port disabled. ignoring.

... but later I did an update via terminal, and after I rebooted I can't login to Ubuntu, and keep dropping to BusyBox. How do I get around this? It happened while I was working in the office.

[ajgreeny]

Have you replaced the original disk or just added to it, ie do you have one disk in the machine or two? If there are two, the addition may have upset the whole system, and if just a single disk it may be named wrongly in grub.

Using a live CD, download and run boot-info-script from in my signature and report back here.

[oldfred]

When I put in a new motherboard, XP wanted to call BillG to make sure it was ok and not a duplicate install. But the call home screen was hidden behind the boot screens and it took me a while to figure out that windows would not do anything until it called home.

One advantage of having Ubuntu in its own partition as then it does not depend on windows boot loader or the NTFS file system.

[FlameReaper]

Have you replaced the original disk or just added to it, ie do you have one disk in the machine or two? If there are two, the addition may have upset the whole system, and if just a single disk it may be named wrongly in grub.

Using a live CD, download and run boot-info-script from in my signature and report back here.

Ah, my bad - I meant that I *swapped* the hard disk drives between the two laptops, actually. Anyhow...

It looks like it seems to be a driver problem, since I was using NVIDIA's proprietary driver. Now trying to reinstall it. Turns out I can actually boot in text mode, which got me a bit confused since I failed to even boot in text mode before.

I'm going to proceed to finish installing the driver and see if there's any success. By the way, I can't use any LiveCDs since this laptop's DVD drive seem to not work somehow, it's not even detected in the system...

[FlameReaper]

Guess I got to the root of the problem, and the graphics problem is just a side-problem I'm having - now that settled, on to the actual problem...

Turns out my bootup was taking a long time to finish, and when I booted in recovery mode (a.k.a text-only) I found these somehow intriguing lines... Now that I can already boot into Ubuntu without much problems (except for that somehow long time to load) I'd like to put this as [solved], but not before I know what's wrong when these lines came out during text-only boot...

[ 2.270262] ieee1394: Host added: ID:BUS[0-00:1023] GUID[00241b0056341200]
[ 6.370036] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[ 11.350035] ata1: device not ready (errno=-16), forcing hardreset
[ 16.550035] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[ 21.410034] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[ 26.610033] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[ 31.470034] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[ 36.670034] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[ 66.490034] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[ 71.510034] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[ 71.510037] ata1: reset failed, giving up
[ 71.510109] ata2: port disabled. ignoring.

It is only after the last two lines only boot process continued to load Ubuntu normally.

[PRC09]

When you stated earlier that you swapped drives between laptops and you are running Wubi,does windows actually boot up and run?? I read that when Wubi is actually installed it does read the information in the windows registry in order to set up the drivers that are used during installation so that could be part of your problem......

The installer may read data from the Windows registry to detect hardware, download the necessary drivers to C:\ubuntu, and add a section to config.txt that will instruct Ubuntu to install the drivers and set the hardware up on the first boot, in order to provide a better out-of-the-box experience for users.

[FlameReaper]

When you stated earlier that you swapped drives between laptops and you are running Wubi,does windows actually boot up and run?? I read that when Wubi is actually installed it does read the information in the windows registry in order to set up the drivers that are used during installation so that could be part of your problem......

Yes, it does. In fact booting into Windows is the first thing I tried before trying to boot up Ubuntu. Now except for the bootlog entries I posted before, there's no problem now

[PRC09]

Not being an expert at this and just thru reading other posts on that error you could try disabling in bios the IE1394 port(firewire or whatever and see what happens..I did have a similar problem with errors referencing my card reader and when I removed it the errors when away and the boot process went to normal.Dont know if this is any help but......

[FlameReaper]

Not being an expert at this and just thru reading other posts on that error you could try disabling in bios the IE1394 port(firewire or whatever and see what happens..I did have a similar problem with errors referencing my card reader and when I removed it the errors when away and the boot process went to normal.Dont know if this is any help but......

Thanks, but I can't disable the FireWire IEEE 1934 port. It seems that in my laptop's BIOS setup I can only change the boot order, the HDD mode (IDE or AHCI - in this case, IDE for me) and the amount of system memory the integrated graphics will use on my laptop.

I guess I should tag this as solved already, but if anyone can tell me what actually went wrong (although it seems to be nothing serious) on the boot log entries I posted there it'll be a great knowledge for me

[FlameReaper]

Uh, bumping this thread after an update via the terminal... Ubuntu worked fine until I rebooted and that's where a new problem surfaced.

I can't seem to load Ubuntu thanks to the root filesystem being unable to mount, and the OS dropped into the BusyBox shell. What do I do to get it running again as usual?