GRUB Being a @$*&%! Please Help!!!

[Neoxhadowespio]

I have read entire post (28 posts) and I have some ideas:

1) Boot error might be caused because usb boot device is not the first one. You have said that your usb device boots in a friend's computer. And you have said that your usb device was the first to boot in your boot order. And you have already tried to use F12 or equivalent key. We are going to discard this option.

2) Your pc cannot boot from a usb device. In order to test this you will need to build a usb device that does not depend on emulation like sometimes unetbootin does. I mean... Either dding rescatux iso directly to the usb hard disk device (Be aware of that), or probably building a persistent usb device.

3) Your pc can boot from a usb device but does not support emulation. I am talking about floppy emulation. From memdisk (syslinux) wiki:

So that means that your BIOS is lacking these interrupts.

You might confirm it if in the past you have booted System Rescue Cd from your system and tried to boot super grub disk or another tool from boot command line and it has failed before ever seeing the tool itself.

4) You do not have an active partition in your hard disk. It sounds stupid, isn't it? I have found some strange BIOSes that refuse to boot if there is not an active partition in your hard disk. It does not matter the boot order, it does not matter if usb boot is enabled or not. It just does not boot anything till it finds an active partition.

The only doubt about this scenario is that I do not remember it was associated exactly with:

Boot error:

The solution for this one would be to extract the hard disk, put it in another machine and activate a partition, probably the first partition.

You can use Super Grub Disk. Boot & Tools. Activate partition for this task.

5) Wrong USB hardware choosen. It might be that BIOS handles rear-usb but not front-usb and you are putting your usb device on front-usb?

I mean... Have you tried to boot from usb using all the female usb devices available on your computer?

-----------
That's it!

Do you remember anything about 3) (Emulation not working)?
Have you tried all the female usb devices? (5)
Try (4).
Now read 1 and 2 just in case.

Hope to hear good piece of news from you. It something of this does work I will consider adding it to Rescatux.

adrian15

1) Thats not the case.
2) I installed Ubuntu this way.
3) Possible...
4) Let's hope not...
5) Doubt it, will try nevertheless.

So 3 and 4 then. Thanks! I finally feel like we are making progress.

[Neoxhadowespio]

(bump!)
Hey, dad's getting very angry.
I don't want Vista!

[adrian15]

(bump!)
Hey, dad's getting very angry.
I don't want Vista!

I am waiting your feedback about 3) and 4).



adrian15

[StrayEddy]

Unetboot puppy linux, and load everything in ram.

[Neoxhadowespio]

Sorry there.
Yeah, I've booted from CD but haven't been able to boot from USB. For number 4, the "Boot Error" comes only with the USB and it says only "Boot Error." So thankfully, thats probably not it. So number 3 now, what would be the solution to that?

[Neoxhadowespio]

But the funny thing is, the machine is fairly expensive and new, something like that shouldn't have been a problem.

[adrian15]

Sorry there.
Yeah, I've booted from CD

Burn Super Grub2 Disk as you would burn the Ubuntu cd to a CD.

Set your PC to boot from Super Grub2 Disk cd. Boot from it.

Choose Detect any OS (first option) and boot into your system from it.



If you are able to boot into your system anyone here will be able to help you to recover your grub from inside your system.

adrian15

[Neoxhadowespio]

...I have no blank disk at hand at the moment...
Any other way?

[adrian15]

...I have no blank disk at hand at the moment...
Any other way?

You can use a blank DVD disk instead.

adrian15

[FormatSeize]

This is not going to sound good: Your computer, in all likelihood, has simply given out on you. This could be through normal wear and tear, or through something being accidently broken during a previous rescue attempt. I've had this happen to me before, and I tried for about a week and a half on Google, these forums, and linuxquestions dot org trying even the most outlandish things to get my computer working again.

First, I couldn't boot from my DVD drive. Okay, so I thought I should format my disk drive and reinstall, thinking that it was a Grub issue. But that didn't work. So, I thought, I would just delete the entire filesystem from the command line. Then on my next boot, I got the Grub rescue prompt. Cool. I can just get the instructions on how to get past this and I will be good to go. But none of it worked.

I tried Hiren's Boot CD, Rescatux, and a few other system rescue things, and they all failed. At this point, I thought my DVD drive was bad (it wasn't, I'm actually using it in my newer computer). So I used a laptop to make a live USB to boot from. That worked. So now I would boot from USB when installing things and what not.

Then, that stopped working too. I never really accessed exactly what the problem was (I built it myself, and it was my first build, so that might say something). I am using both the DVD drive and the hard disk drive from that computer, and they work fine. I still have that computer, but it still simply refuses to boot.

I hope this is not what happened to you. It's horrible to have something like that happen. But it could be a possibility.