Install ubuntu and get blank screen with cursor on bootup - no grub

[PhiJ]

Hi, I've just installed intrepid ibex (alongside win XP) from the linux-format dvd on my parents computer. I had to manually fiddle with my partitions, as ubuntu didn't seem to want to resize them, and the drive does have at least one bad sector. So. I reboot, and I get a black screen with a cursor in the top left. Nothing else.

Setting the bootable flag back to the windows partition lets windows load fine. I tried chrooting into the installed ubuntu from the live CD (which works fine), and running update-grub, but that didn't help at all.

Any ideas on how to fix this

(oh, and in terms of technical know how, I'm completely new to ubuntu, but have had a gentoo system at home for half a year, so know quite a bit about specific things, and may get thrown by the differences between the distros. Like menu.lst (where's my grub.conf!?))

[Edit]I've now tried to chroot in and install grub as per these instructions. Didn't work, as I got an error 15: file not found when I looked for /boot/grub/stage1. But just looking with ls confirms that /boot/grub/stage1 is there. I'm now very confused. I've tried checking the partition for errors with fsck, and didn't get anything out.

[PhiJ]

Okay, so the reason for an Error 15 is explained here (http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub-faq.html) (I needed to make symbolic link from /boot/boot to /boot), but following the instructions in the grub guide (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=224351) didn't seem to help at all.

Anyone got any idea?

I've fixed it. In case anybody has the same problem, I first used a super grub disk to get grub on the MBR, but then it didn't know about menu.lst, and gave me a prompt on bootup, so I followed the normal install procedures (after making /boot/boot a symbolic link again) and it worked. I think that it would have worked if I just copied /boot/grub/menu.lst to /boot/boot/grub/menu.lst