Ubuntu
grub2 package

Impossible to boot computers after upgrades

Asked by Chris Crofton-Sleigh

Hi,

I would be very grateful for some help with these (similar) problems:

We have two computers in this household. Both have two hard drives and one computer runs 32-bit Windows 7 and the other runs 64-bit Windows 7. The second hard drive in each computer has Ubuntu 11.04 in one case and Ubuntu 11.10 in the other.

Today I thought it might be a good idea to upgrade Ubuntu 11.04 in one machine to 11.10 and to upgrade Ubuntu 11.10 in the 64-bit machine to 64-bit Ubuntu. In both cases however, it has turned out to be an utter disaster.

In the case where I upgraded Ubuntu 11.04 on the 32-bit machine I got a boot menu which offered 'Ubuntu pae', 'Previous versions of Linux'' and' Windows 7'. Selecting 'Ubuntu pae' prodiuces a purple screen and nothing else and selecting 'Previous versions of Linux' eventually boots the machine using the old version of the kernel. Windows boots normally if I select it

When I switch on the 64 bit machine I immediately get the message "Error: no such device" followed by "grub rescue>" and no boot menu. I have booted it with the Windows CD but Windows is unable to repair it - typing "fixmbr" at a command prompt gives an error message. I have also booted it with the Ubuntu Live CD and tried to re-install grub but that won't work either. In this machine 'fdisk -l' reveals that there is /dev/sda1 (Windows) and /dev sdb1 (Ubuntu 64 bit) and that both are marked with an asterisk.

What I did with this machine was to boot it using the 64-bit live CD and then I did the following:

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sdb
sudo umount /dev/sdb1 ; sudo reboot

It still give the error message about 'no such device'.

Is there any way out of these disasters shore of re-formatting the hard drives and starting all over again? If so, would some kind person help, please?

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Ubuntu grub2 Edit question
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Chris Crofton-Sleigh
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Revision history for this message
actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

You don't need to format the drive entirely, just remove the Ubuntu partitions and reinstall the OS. That's if you go down that route. Personally I have never had a successful upgrade and always clean install.

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Chris Crofton-Sleigh (chris-cs62) said : 		#2

Thanks for the suggestion actionparsnip. I am more interested in getting the 64-bit machine running again. Putting 64-bit Ubuntu 11.10 was a clean install and I think the problem is that I don't know where GRUB should go.

Ubuntu is on /dev/sdb1 and Windows is on /dev/sda1 and I read somewhere that GRUB should be on /dev/sdb (i.e. not on /dev/sdb1) does that make sense? I had thought that if it were on /dev/sdb it would find both Windows and Ubuntu but it hasn't - it has just screwed up the machine instead.

I willl probably do a clean install of Ubutnu 11.10 on the other machine (the one that was upgraded) as I have never found upgrdes to be successful. The only one that was was going from Ubuntu 8 to Ubuntu 9, since then they have always had problems

Revision history for this message
actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#3

Put grub on the MBR, it can boot both OSes and is also the default in the desktop OS. Either drive having grub is fine as long as you set the BIOS to boot that drive.

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Chris Crofton-Sleigh (chris-cs62) said : 		#4

Many thanks actionparsnip. I have set the BIOS to boot from the second hard drive and now all is fine. It has saved a lot of re-installing!

With regard to the problem after the upgrade on the other computer I am going to delete the Ubuntu partition and do a clean install. Upgrades seem to cause more problems than doing a clean install in the first place - the upgraded Ubuntu just refuses to run so there is nothing for it (I think) but to do a clean install