9.04 Ugrade/Update = no boot

[ghoracek]

I have been running Ubuntu 9.04 without any problems for quite some time (months) on a dual boot maching (WinXP). Last night I got a update notification to upgrade -- among the updates/upgrades listed was a kernel upgrade -- which is always scary. I ran the update/upgrade as usual and it got down to where it asked if I wanted to keep my custom menu.lst; clicked OK and let it run. When I looked again the monitor was blank and moving the mouse or hitting any key would not wake the machine up. No activity with the HD light -- so it was not working away on the install, but I still let it sit for an hour. Still nothing -- a blank monitor and it wouldn't wake up. So I hard booted and now nothing happens -- it seems to check for a CD but then nothing -- no grub, no menu, no error messages, it just sits there. Last time this happened (on another machine) I spent days working on it and even tried installing fresh form a live CD (numerous times). I finally ended up using gparted live to rebuild the MBR; blowing away WinXP and installing Ubuntu fresh -- but I lost all my WinXP stuff. This time gparted live won't even run so I am really hosed apparantly. I haven't tried a Ubuntu live CD yet, and i'm not sure what I would do if it ran. Where do I start? (tonight -- I'm at work now).

[stlsaint]

boot to the live cd and run fsik -l and post your menu.lst. i too had a kernel update issue with a (candela image) and it cause me to do a fresh install. hopefully this is not the case with you.

[ghoracek]

As I feared when gparted live did not run this morning. No live CD will run (I tried many). I do get to look as a frozen splash screen showing that I have ASUS A7V400-MX motherboard. No POST, nothing. I am really hosed. What pisses me off is that neither this problem or the similar problem with an earlier computer is my fault -- the Ubuntu upgrade process hosed me. So even if I could find a boot diskette for XP, it won't run either. Done; finee.

glh

[falconindy]

If you're having trouble getting past your POST, that's hardly an Ubuntu related problem. Are you able to get into the BIOS? I'd think the next step would be to save your current BIOS config (if possible) and then reset to the defaults.

[ghoracek]

Yes, something else is going on as well. My operating hypothesis is that the upgrade hosed my mbr (that was what happened previously on another machine with a similar appearing upgrade induced problem). And I have decided on three approaches to fix that, but each requires a CD bootable machine (two are linux based fixes; one is Win). There is the strong possibility that I also have a hardware problem at the same time (unrelated to Ubuntu). After numerous attempts to boot with a live CD, I did get the CD to start to load once -- the Ubuntu boot process started, but it froze and the machine shut itself off. The CD drive is a likely culprit at this point. I will invest that much money as I can always use the drive in one of my other machines if the fix goes for naught. Once it boots, I will soon know if the mbr is hosed or not -- I think it is, but that is probably recoverable. I can't get into the BIOS and anything deeper than that is beyond my capabilities anyway. Clearly it calls the CD boot process so I do not think the problem is there. I will report back later (with the upcoming holiday weekend I don't know when I will get back to that machine). While it is my main machine, I have a dual boot laptop and my wife's dedicated Ubuntu machine to use in the meantime (plus my work machin e--oops I'm late ;-).

[ghoracek]

Solved. New CD reader. Used live CD/terminal to run

sudo lilo -M /dev/sda mbr

to get WinXP to boot (had to install lilo first because contrary to tutorial lilo was not on live CD). No grub just a straight boot to WinXP.

Then reinstalled grub to the MBR and Ubuntu 9.x was back just like before.

Whew.