Ubuntu
grub2 package

Intermittent "No Boot Device Found" on Natty/Win7 Dual Boot

Asked by BlackAeronaut

Got a real odd ball here. I'm using a Toshiba Satellite A665D series laptop (AMD64 architecture). I installed Natty from a CD and it went off without a hitch. Initially, it rebooted just fine.

After a few restarts, however, it started giving me "No boot device found" errors - this was coming from the laptop itself and not GRUB. It recognized that the hard drive and the CD drive was there, but it refused to boot from them (even when I hit F12 and manually selected whatever drive).

Now, here's where it gets odd.

In a fit of desperation, I pulled the HD (750GB WD Scorpio Blue - WD7500BPVT) and stuck it an a SATA-USB micro enclosure. Wonder of all wonders, Ubuntu boots, but not Windows 7 (of course, we all know why).

Putting the hard drive back, Windows boots just fine... and will reboot, cold boot, what-have-you.

But Ubuntu? It will not cold boot, reboot, or awaken from hibernate without me getting a "Boot device not found" error from the laptop. Fortunately, suspend seems to work just fine, but that, of course, doesn't let me jump back into Windows when I need to.

HELP!

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

Is the drive healthy?
Is the data in the partition healthy?
Is the RAM healthy?

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BlackAeronaut (blackaeronaut) said : 		#2

The drive's SMART Data shows it's just fine - just a few bad sectors (to be expected in a laptop, really).

I'm pretty sure the data in the partition is healthy - I have GRUB off in it's own little partition so nothing should be interfering with it.

And I'm fairly certain that the memory is healthy, too, because Windows 7 would have been giving me BSODs if that was the case. I've only had one and that was because I was running SimCity 4 Deluxe on there... it's not really made for a Vista-based machine, so it tends to crap out.

I'll go ahead and check all those variables just to be sure, though.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#3

Boot to liveCD and fsck the partitions.
There is the ultimate boot CD which will have the tool from drive's manufacturer and you can test the drive from there (takes a while).
You can test the RAM using memtest on the Ubuntu install. It;s also on the ultimate boot CD

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BlackAeronaut (blackaeronaut) said : 		#4

So far, the boot partition's file system shows as clean in fsck. A surface scan of the disc also passes muster. Mem test we'll have to wait on because I gotta do the whole wave-a-dead-chicken-over-it thing I talked about above before it will even let me boot from a CD.

When I said "No Boot Devices Found" I meant it. Booting from the CD was one of the first things I tried - both the Ubuntu CD I burned, and my holo-printed Windows 7 disc. Neither worked. To me, this means one of two things: 1) something in my laptop's main board is borked (not likely, given that Windows doesn't do this to me, but still somewhat plausible) or 2) there is some small detail in my specific make-and-model of main board that Ubuntu mishandles on the shut-down.

I'm gonna run the Memtest overnight tonight, but that's as long as I can do it for. I'll need it up and running tomorrow, so I'll post whatever it comes up with tomorrow. I doubt that anything will come of it, though.

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delance (olivier-delance) said : 		#5

Do you still have the issue ?

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BlackAeronaut (blackaeronaut) said : 		#6

Unfortunately, yes. This is after I tried going to 10.04 LTS - it worked for a couple of boots but then began failing in the manner described above.

I'm going to take a wild stab at installing Hardy Heron - it worked without issue for me before so there's no reason why it won't now. If that doesn't work, then I'll know without a doubt that I have an issue with my machine itself.

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#7

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Needs information' state without activity for the last 15 days.