grub upgrade does wrong - 'error: no such device'

[plwm2]

Hi!
When installing ubuntu via wubi, I now cannot run anything on this laptop, except using the ubuntu live cd (not even the windows vista cd seems to be able to help). I go back to the beginning of the problem - I have the following setup:
1) Laptop - windows vista home premium installed
2) External hard drive (formatted to NTFS)
In the first instance, i had only vista, but then decided to mess around with ubuntu 10.04 LTS, so installed it on the external hard drive via wubi. On restarting the laptop (as one is prompted to do to complete installation), ubuntu automatically asks me to update grub, but before doing that, it asks for the location for which i should install grub (the same window suggests that I should install it on both locations 1 and 2...or perhaps i misinterpreted it...not knowing anything about booloaders, I followed this - I still don't really know what is going on), then grub gets updated and i restart. On restart, i simply get the error message "Error: no such device" with some random string after this, and then the grub rescue prompt comes up.

After trawling through a few websites, I found several suggestions:
1) Fix the MBR by booting using the Windows Recovery CD - I tried this, but no recovery console appears, as it should do, but rather, all the resulting pages try to get you to install windows, as if there was nothing on the machine - no options for repairing or command prompt access... nothing. So this didn't work.
2) Install lilo to fix the MBR.
3)Get some info, regarding the drives: the suggestion was to use a bash script called "bootinfo" from sourceforge, which i've now done. The result is the following output:

Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010

============================= Boot Info Summary: ==============================

=> Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in
partition #256 for /boot/grub.
=> Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb and looks on the same drive in
partition #256 for /boot/grub.

sda1: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ntfs
Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7
Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
Operating System:
Boot files/dirs:

sda2: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ntfs
Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7
Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
Operating System: Windows Vista
Boot files/dirs: /bootmgr /Boot/BCD /Windows/System32/winload.exe
/wubildr.mbr /wubildr

sdb1: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ntfs
Boot sector type: Windows XP
Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
Operating System:
Boot files/dirs: /ubuntu/winboot/wubildr.mbr /ubuntu/winboot/wubildr
/ubuntu/disks/root.disk /ubuntu/disks/swap.disk

sdb1/Wubi: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ext4
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
Mounting failed:
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/loop1,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so


=========================== Drive/Partition Info: =============================

Drive: sda ___________________ __________________________________________________ ___

Disk /dev/sda: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12161 cylinders, total 195371568 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Partition Boot Start End Size Id System

/dev/sda1 2,048 12,290,047 12,288,000 27 Hidden HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 * 12,290,048 195,368,959 183,078,912 7 HPFS/NTFS


Drive: sdb ___________________ __________________________________________________ ___

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Partition Boot Start End Size Id System

/dev/sdb1 63 976,768,064 976,768,002 7 HPFS/NTFS


blkid -c /dev/null: __________________________________________________ __________

Device UUID TYPE LABEL

/dev/loop0 squashfs
/dev/loop1 6883a78b-1f00-4956-a50d-1aec436c9ecc ext4
/dev/sda1 3A7A827E7A8236A3 ntfs WINRE
/dev/sda2 1EDE8572DE85434F ntfs OS_INSTALL
/dev/sda: PTTYPE="dos"
/dev/sdb1 C21C9A161C9A0617 ntfs FreeAgent Drive
/dev/sdb: PTTYPE="dos"

============================ "mount | grep ^/dev output: ===========================

Device Mount_Point Type Options

aufs / aufs (rw)
/dev/sr0 /cdrom iso9660 (ro,noatime)
/dev/loop0 /rofs squashfs (ro,noatime)


I would be extremely grateful if someone could help me work out what the best possible course of action would be!!! This is fairly urgent...

Thanks in advance!!!

Peter

[bcbc]

Yes boot the live cd and then install lilo. Go to Applications, Accessories, Terminal, then enter:

sudo apt-get install lilo
sudo lilo -M /dev/sda mbr

This will get windows booting again.

I noticed too that bootinfoscript cannot open the root.disk (virtual disk containing wubi). This might mean you have to reinstall wubi (hopefully not). If you do, always bypass the grub popups asking you where to install it (leave everything unchecked, and click on the next screen to confirm bypassing the install).

[plwm2]

Hi, thanks for your fast reply.

I typed the first of your commands to install LILO, and there are three things I need to ask:

1) The first screen comes up says:
"It seems to be your first LILO installation. It is absolutely necessary to run liloconfig(8) when you complete this process and execute /sbin/lilo after this. LILO won't work if you don't do this.
2) I press ok, and everything goes swimmingly, until the warning messages at the end:
"
WARNING: kernel & initrd not found in the root directory (/vmlinuz & /initrd.img)
WARNING: Do NOT reboot or LILO may fail to boot if your kernel+initrd is large.
WARNING: Please read /usr/share/doc/lilo/README.Debian
"
3) Out of pure curiosity, i checked the /boot/grub folder (another website suggested to check this), and there is only one file in it called "grubenv". Is this ok?


What should I do now, may I ask?

Thanks!

Peter

[bcbc]

Hi, thanks for your fast reply.

I typed the first of your commands to install LILO, and there are three things I need to ask:

1) The first screen comes up says:
"It seems to be your first LILO installation. It is absolutely necessary to run liloconfig(8) when you complete this process and execute /sbin/lilo after this. LILO won't work if you don't do this.
2) I press ok, and everything goes swimmingly, until the warning messages at the end:
"
WARNING: kernel & initrd not found in the root directory (/vmlinuz & /initrd.img)
WARNING: Do NOT reboot or LILO may fail to boot if your kernel+initrd is large.
WARNING: Please read /usr/share/doc/lilo/README.Debian
"
3) Out of pure curiosity, i checked the /boot/grub folder (another website suggested to check this), and there is only one file in it called "grubenv". Is this ok?


What should I do now, may I ask?

Thanks!

Peter
Sorry - I meant to say you could ignore those as they refer to a different usage of lilo (to boot linux). You are using it in a form that's equivalent to the windows bootloader - it just looks for the partition marked with the boot flag and transfers control to it. So you will be ok. Also, since you are on the live CD, looking around in /boot/grub won't tell you much.

So just run the second command I listed above and shutdown and reboot.

[plwm2]

Fixed, like a dream!! Thank you so much!!!!