Won't boot after load ..Error 18

Looks like you installed on an older system that does not recognize booting on a hard drive cylinder > 1023. You need to redo your install and ensure that your boot partition is on your primary drive at the very beginning of it. Below is a link with more details.

http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/GRUB#Error_18

BTW why are you installing 5.04? Why not install 5.10? Your error is not because you installed 5.04 as it can happen with any operating system.

Mike,
  Newbiee here!! Just decided that this system sitting in the corner of my computer lab (College Voc Prison Class) needed to be used. I got this off Ebay from a friend. I am attempting to download 5.10. Expert w/ Windows, and i-d-10-t with Linux. When to the Linux.help.org and got instructions for partitioning... I understand a gread deal of running COmputers (build 2000 server lab with 60 student stations and maintain 99% uptime for last 4 years with all sort of college hackers! But, again new to Linux.

  Because the system will not boot as is how do I get command prompt to do the manual partition that it talks about. Boot from DOS, using fdisk with what part. info and then try the reinstall ????

Mike Principito <email address hidden> wrote:
  Support request #441 on Ubuntu changed:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+ticket/441

Comment:
Looks like you installed on an older system that does not recognize booting on a hard drive cylinder > 1023. You need to redo your install and ensure that your boot partition is on your primary drive at the very beginning of it. Below is a link with more details.

http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/GRUB#Error_18

BTW why are you installing 5.04? Why not install 5.10? Your error is not because you installed 5.04 as it can happen with any operating system.

Hi again,
Your best bet is to just reinstall off the CD again. When partitioning next time around ensure that your /boot partition is at the beginning of the drive. Here is a simple example of a drive layout:

mwp@chao:~$ sudo fdisk /dev/hda
Password:

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 14593.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 62 497983+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 63 305 1951897+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda3 306 12463 97659135 83 Linux

As you can see I have 3 partitions (nothing fancy) /dev/hda1 is /boot /dev/hda2 is my swap and /dev/hda3 everything else. In a past life I used to get more fancy with my parition table, but not recently as I see no need (other people may differ just my oppinion).

But like I said you should just be able to boot from CD and rerun your install... that is probably the easiest way to recover. Otherwise your gonna have to get a little fancy with shrinking and moving partitions and it would be very difficult to explain (and probably not worth the trouble).

Tried re-installing off CD, but now get Error 2. More info at https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+ticket/361/