ubuntu doen't display boot menù

[Garabombo]

I'm a new user and installed ubuntu 8.04 on the second hard drive of my PC, while on the first I had previously installed XP.
At the boot time, the system doesn't display the menù from which to select the booting option.
I followed the procedure described in the reply posted by herman on November 11th, 2007,regarding hot to install boot loader from ubuntu but it does not work.
I hope somebody can help me

[caljohnsmith]

First, please boot your Live CD, open a terminal (applications > accessories > terminal), and post:

sudo fdisk -lu
Also, can you go into your BIOS and change the boot order? It would be most ideal if you can do that so you can boot directly from the Ubuntu drive and not the Windows drive.

[Garabombo]

here itis the output of fdisk
Disco /dev/sda: 61.4 GB, 61492838400 byte
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7476 cylinders, totale 120103200 settori
Units = settori of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x03af03af

Dispositivo Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 81915434 40957686 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disco /dev/sdb: 122.9 GB, 122942324736 byte
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14946 cylinders, totale 240121728 settori
Units = settori of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xaeabaeab

Dispositivo Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 63 120101939 60050938+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 120101940 240107489 60002775 5 Esteso
/dev/sdb5 120102003 237087269 58492633+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb6 237087333 240107489 1510078+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

I also tried to set the ubuntu hd as boot hd but inthiscase the system dos not boot at all.

[caljohnsmith]

Can you boot your sda Windows drive at all? From you Live CD, do the following to install Grub to the MBR (Master Boot Record) of you sdb drive:

sudo grub
grub> root (hd1,4)
grub> setup (hd1)
grub> quit
Reboot, set your BIOS to boot the sdb drive, and let me know if you get a Grub menu. If you do get the Grub menu, most likely you won't be able to boot Ubuntu or Windows; but see if you can get as far as a Grub menu, and we can work from there.

[Garabombo]

nothing is changed, again the system does not boot from the second drive. So I restored the firstdrive as boot drive and again the menù does not appear and ubunto starts

[caljohnsmith]

OK, how about posting:

sudo dd if=/dev/sda count=1 2>/dev/null | strings | grep -ie grub -ie "missing operating system"
sudo dd if=/dev/sdb count=1 2>/dev/null | strings | grep -ie grub -ie "missing operating system"
sudo dd if=/dev/sda bs=1 skip=1049 count=2 2>/dev/null | hexdump
sudo dd if=/dev/sdb bs=1 skip=1049 count=2 2>/dev/null | hexdump
Next post:

sudo mount /dev/sdb5 /mnt
cat /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst

[Garabombo]

Done. And now?

[4uvak91]

Can you boot your sda Windows drive at all? From you Live CD, do the following to install Grub to the MBR (Master Boot Record) of you sdb drive:

sudo grub
grub> root (hd1,4)
grub> setup (hd1)
grub> quit
Reboot, set your BIOS to boot the sdb drive, and let me know if you get a Grub menu. If you do get the Grub menu, most likely you won't be able to boot Ubuntu or Windows; but see if you can get as far as a Grub menu, and we can work from there.


how do youk now hich HDD it's?? i have same problem....