Installed Mint on 1 drive now Ubuntu won't boot on another

Asked by Scruphy

I have Ubuntu 12.04 on 1 drive and I installed Mint on another drive. Both drives are solid state. Now Ubuntu won't boot, all I get is the flashing cursor and typing doesn't seem to do anything. But with Mint running I can see and access the files on the other drive. What went wrong and how can I fix it?

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Ubuntu xserver-xorg-video-ati Edit question
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Scruphy
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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said :
#1

What video chip do you use?

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Scruphy (scruphy) said :
#2

Its an AMD ATI RS880 [Radeon HD 4250][

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Scruphy (scruphy) said :
#3

The Ubuntu Instalation was working fine before I put Mint ont the other drive. Now the Mint is fine but the ubuntu won't boot.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said :
#4

Add the boot option:

nomodeset

May help

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Scruphy (scruphy) said :
#5

From Mint I can see on the Ubuntu drive there is a folder "boot" and it has files with names like "abi-3.2.0-33generic" and "config-3.2.0-33" and "initrd.img-3.2.0-33-generic". Is one of these where I add the boot option 'nomodeset'?

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said :
#6

Press E on the kernel and remove:

quiet splash

In it's place, add:

nomodeset

Press ENTER to boot

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Scruphy (scruphy) said :
#7

The kernel selector doesn't come up. When I try to boot it goes straight to a flashing cursor and never shows anything else.

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Scruphy (scruphy) said :
#8

When I installed Linux Mint on one drive it seems to have done something to the drive with ubuntu on it. I didn't think it would or could affect a different drive from the one it was installing to, but Ubuntu worked fine until then. I can access the Ubuntu drive from Mint, but I get no access to anything when I try to boot Ubuntu. It seems as if the computer doesn't recognize there is anything bootasble on it, but the files appear to be there and the disk utility says the partition is bootable.

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Scruphy (scruphy) said :
#9

I googled a bit and discovered an image for a boot repair cd. After I burned the image and booted from it a graphic interface came up and inspected everything on both drives and repaired the grub loader. I can now boot Ubuntu again. It also put Ubuntu and Mint on the same boot menu so I don't have to go into the bios to switch them (as I have done on previous Linux instalations). And now I find myself wondering: if I had examined the boot menu of Mint better would the option for Ubuntu have been there and I would have had no problem at all? Some days I am briliant and some days not so much. I wonder if there is any humble pie left.