Ubuntu Installation :: Screen Flashes With Bios Info - No Hard Drive Detected
Jan 1, 2011
I have been running Ubuntu 9.04 for the past year. Tonight decided to upgrade to 9.10 thru update manager. Every thing regarding the install seemed fine until the request to restart the computer. I hit the restart and it will not boot up. Computer goes thru the normal restart screens.
Screen flashes with bios info--no hard drive detected, then proceeds to show booting from hd, then loads grub stage 1.5 (not grub 2)and screen goes blank.
The brand new MEMOREX 24X Lightscribe DVD player(SATA) is not detected by my UBUNTU 10.10 install (via USB stick LiveCD install). I know it should have worked out-of-the box, but it does not, dmesg or lshw command shows all other SATA connections ( 2 hard drives) , BUT the DVD Drive. The DVD drive is detected by the MSI BIOS, it is also fully functional in the dual-booted Windos 7 installation next to the Ubuntu 10.10, so I know the DVD player is ok. I have the latest B3 Stepping MSI P67A-GD65 motherboard with Intel i7 2600K cpu.
Quick background: I've always had problems with Ubuntu on my external hard drive, but I think it's actually with grub in Gnome - any Gnome. I had Karmic installed until after grub upgraded and a bootloader error made it impossible to log in, so I went over to PCLOS KDE.
I've missed Ubuntu and really wanted Lucid, so I tried reinstalling it to the external. Same problem. I tried PCLOS Gnome, and, yep, same - though I could reinstall the KDE version no problem. Anyway, after umpteen attempts, which included formatting the external drive in Windows (which doesn't ever recognise the external in My Computer till I do), letting Ubuntu do the partitioning, doing the partitioning myself, I finally tried to install through Windows via Wubi - still to the external drive.
It failed, and now the drive is not recognised in the BIOS, Ubuntu, or Windows (I've now installed a dual Ubuntu-Windows boot on my internal). Have I stuffed up my external drive? Is there some way I can make it recognisable (changing BIOS settings???). Do I need to supply more information?
I have a Sony VAIO AR series, it contains two separate 120GB hard drives that were originally configured in a raid. They're called hd0, and hd1. I disabled the raid and partitioned hd1 in 3 ways, one medium sized partition for the operating system (ext4), one large partition for storage (ext4) and one small partition for Swap space. I then installed Ubuntu onto hd1 with help from UNetbootin. After installation went fine I loaded up Windows installer, created two NTFS partitions, one medium and one large, and installed Windows 7 of the medium sized partition. Now I can't figure out how to boot into the Ubuntu side on hd1. Needless to say, in Windows, hd1 is not visable at all. I can see my two NTFS partitions fine.
When booting up I go through two main screens. The first screen "Matrix Storage Manager Option ROM," lists the physical disks (0, and 1.) and gives me the option to enter configuration with [cntrl+i]. The second screen gives me a list of options to boot from, Yet they are all Windows options and many are redundant. The list includes "Enter Command Line," which when selected tells me "Boot failed! Press any key to enter command line." command line brings me to "grub>" I tried booting Ubuntu from this command line, but don't have much to work with here. I followed this guide, but it didn't take me to completion and I'm not sure where to go from here. http://www.mepis.org/docs/en/index.p...m_command_line
If an old bios and mainboard is being used, such that it cannot handle the large size of HD, then is it useful to say use a live CD and from its initial menu (pressed a key), choose 'Boot From First Hard Disk'? Would this be similar in getting around a bios and disk size limitation I wonder - like - does the use of a live CD in this way avoid using the bios to point to the active partition??
The reason for asking is that a friend has a couple of quality old rack mounted server machines and wants to use Ubuntu having now fitted 80 GB empty drives. Live CD seems ok, and 11.04 install goes ok but on boot up grub comes back with an error.
I recall that early machines cannot see larger(?) HDs for booting purposes even though installs go ok in very large HDs. I wondered if a live CD to boot up temporarily - trouble shooting - would be worth trying for this reason, or am I way off?
After lot's of research i still can't find any solution to my problem, that's why i'm posting a message here.So, it's been few days now that i'm trying to install ubuntu 10.10, with the live CD, but each time when i must choose where to install it or how to make partition, it just tell me there is no hard drive..(i have two 1 TB sata hard drive )So i tried many things, GParted doesn't find my hard drive either, they appear in the bios (i can run windows), try to uninstall a raid program that might hide the hard drive, but it didn't work either.
So i came to see that i had Marvell 9123 which seems to be a SATA controller, and few people seems to have some similar issue with that Marvell stuff..I'm quite desperate now.. i tried to install ubuntu on a USB drive but my computer just doesn't boot on it (i tried this method for the sb drive URL...
I installed Ubuntu 10.10 onto my laptop and got a new plug and play device that wasnt being read so I went to go and install windows onto my laptop and when I get to the screen to select my partition it says its unreadable or its not detected but when I restart it it works fine in loading ubuntu.
I have a working F-10 box with an older motherboard (pre-sata). The p-ata ports are full (4 drives), so I'm trying to add a sata controller and another drive. The sata controller plugs into the pci bus, but is not detected by the bios (very old). After booting, the OS loads the driver module(s) and detects the new controller and drive. I was able to add the new sata drive into the LVM system using system-config-lvm. All was fine until I rebooted.
I get pages of lvm errors and booting fails. It looks like it's trying to mount the volumes before the sata controller is modprobed. Is there a way to get the os to modprobe for the new controller before trying to mount? The extra drive space is on a data partition, not the boot partition.
i have just put in my new 320gb seagate hdd and it shows in bios, however upon booting from USB it does not show on the OS, nor does it show on the installer does anyone have any idea what could cause this or how to sort it?
I switched the Hard Drive in my main desktop yesterday with another just so I could install something on it. Then, when I switched my other desktop hard drive back to it's original, it wouldn't detect it.
The power cables and all the connections are still good, because it still recognizes my other computers hard drive. I'm in deep trouble for screwing up the family PC, how can I fix it?
I have a home network that includes a couple of computers {A, B, C, D}. currently, I have a cron jon that runs every minute and updates (using rsync) the hard drives of computers {B, C, D} with the contents of hard drive {A}. So far everything works great, as hard drive {A} barely has any information on it. Now, I am about to copy a lot of information (about 8 GBs) to hard drive {A}. Naturally, the cron job will run (as it runs every 1-min) and try to 'sync' the contents with hard drives {B, C, D}.
Given my network (100Mbit/sec), there is no way the cron job will be able to 'copy' the contents to hard drives {B, C, D} in one minute. It will take much more time. Does this situation create a problem? meaning, will cron re-run a new rsync instance 1min later, even though an existing rsync process is running and still copying information to hard drives {B,C,D}? Will my backups be hurt / slowed down tremendously because of this?
I have a Dell Inspiron 5150 which I first upgraded 'over-the-air' to Narwhal. This completed with no errors. After reboot, the screen momentarily displays some icons before reverting to the background - this loops round every few seconds.I've subsequently tried installing with the CD which runs through with no errors, but does the same thing when it's finished - blink... blink... blink...
start getting Linux up and running. Like a lot of people, I chose an older computer I could fuss with, a 500mhz 256meg ram machine, and decided to install Puppy on a spare 40meg hard drive I have, as my bios does not boot from usb...I think...
Anyway, I have found that my bios does not recognize the hard drive when formatted to ext2! I have taken the drive and formatted it back to ntfs, and my bios recognizes it, and then back again to ext2, and nope, it's not there, thus I am still booting puppy from the cd...sigh...
Is my bios so out of date that I'm just out of luck? Is there anyway to check this?
I installed 10.10 of the live boot CD. It said everything went fine, now when I go to boot into Linux it just flashes the underscore on a black screen. What do I do from here?
My Toshiba 500Gb USB hard drive is not being detected anymore when i insert it in 9.10. It only started doing this from last week, it was fine before (and it works fine in Windows XP). The connections are fine and all, because when i type "lsusb", i see it as follows:
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 19d2:0063 ONDA Communication S.p.A. Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 004: ID 0930:0b09 Toshiba Corp.
I am trying to mount a 2nd NTFS storage disk in my new installation on Ubuntu 10.10, I can see it in the disk manager, but cannot access the files, I tried following the steps on this on another thread and i got the following error:
I have 1tb Seagate Freeagent NTFS External HD. I have Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 with dual boot as Ubuntu. I'm primarily a windows user, since i'm not that well acquainted with linux. External Hard Drive does not detect- when i connect it..it just gives a whirring sound and the "My Computer" window hangs. Figured out the cause- and temporary solution- The drive should do principle mount automatically. It won't if the file system is not "clean". That is possible if the drive was connected while you hibernated Windows, or if you did not properly disconnect the drive.
I booted with ubuntu and did the following- sudo fdisk -l and got the following: Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204884992 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x396e2b4d
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 1 121601 976760001 7 HPFS/NTFS
Then I typed: sudo mkdir /media/FreeAgent sudo chmod 777 /media/FreeAgent And wrapped it up with editing fstab with the following code: #FreeAgent USB Drive /dev/sdf1 /media/FreeAgent ntfs defaults 0 0
Now the browser window for the freeagent hard drive pops up and I can access everything. I try to shutdown the computer but it won't as long as the hard disk is connected. So I have to pull the usb out. And the problem remains the same. I want the hard disk to be detected normally on my windows/linux (like normal usbs work-plug it in and it works). Also have no clue how to work a temporary solution like this with windows yet. I have boot with ubuntu everytime and repeat these steps when I want to access it.
I have a problem with my external hard drive. I've always used to connect it to my Ubuntu Server with the following command: sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdc1 ..and it's worked fine, but after a reboot I did a couple of times ago, the hard drive no longer appears.sudo fdisk -l doesn't show the hard drive anymore. Connecting it to a Windows computer works, I even tried the "safely remove harddrive" function, but to no avail.
I was running Fedora 10 I belive- no issues - did an update to 12 via DVD and now the screen continuously flashes... I see posts about Nvidia issues - but this laptop uses ATI based on HP's website.
I have been using Debian for three or so years now. Not sure what all the difference it makes, but I'm installing Debian Squeeze on a Sony Vaio desktop computer... With an nVidia GeForce 5200 which works perfectly in other computers and on the same computer when dual booting with Windows XP. I've tried and installed several times already to no avail. When I fresh install just the standard system, no graphic desktop, no Xorg, no servers, no nothing, just the standard system, command line only. When I do the initial boot on this blessed computer, part way through the boot process my monitor shuts off and it says frequency out of range (thats a message from the monitor itself, not the computer or debian).
The same install process I've executed countless times. I thought it was a dependency issue, problem with X perhaps. I can install lenny, but not squeeze. When booting in single user mode, it seems like it craps out either during or right after it loads or does something with the "drm" - you know how during the boot script, the machine "flashes" the fonts and the screen blips... its seems to me like that's where its happening at. The monitor works just fine, I really don't think that's the problem. But it is frustrating and I have no clue where to go about finding what the issue is if I can't see whats going on.
I just had a fresh install of Fedora 13 x86_64 on my notebook after using fedora 13 x32 for a while.I am using KDE Desktop.Everything seemed to be working fine out of the box except for minor problems with sound and plugins.The biggest issue is that Fedora does not recognize when I plug an external USB HDD (WD 320 GB for this matter).The USB light on the HDD does not go on, and nothing is auto mounted.It seems that USB does not work at all - I have tried to plug another USB device and it didn't seem to have power.
I have Seagate Freeagent Go 500GB external hard drive that I use for backup. I wanted to resize the partition so I used GParted to shrink the 500GB NTFS partition to 400GB. The other 100 I wanted to encrypt and use for some other more important files. For some reason, the shrink failed and I disconnected the hard drive and reconnected it. I didn't see the icon appear on the desktop. I went into the Disk Utility to discover that GParted's shrink error deleted all of the partitions on my hard drive. So I created a new 400GB NTFS partition and put back all of my files. The other 100 is unallocated currently.
It will normally mount automatically and show up on the desktop but the hard drive won't mount without me going into the Disk Utility and mounting it through there. I can't even mount it from the Terminal with root privileges. It gives me this:
Quote:
sudo mount /media/My Data mount: can't find /media/My Data in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
Now, I can unmount with root privileges and I can unmount it from the Disk Utility. I can browse and edit the files within. But I can't unmount it from within Nautilus or on the desktop (the Safely Remove Drive option is not there).
The new 400GB partition also isn't detected by GParted. It just shows the whole drive as unallocated.
I don't really have any Linux experience. But I wanted to try it out. Now I'm afraid I did not set this up properly. Grub gives me 3 options:
Fedora (2.6.38.8-32.fc15.x86_64) Fedora (2.6.38.8-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64) Other
When I select <Other> to boot into windows... it starts to try to boot... but then flashes a quick blue screen & restarts. I tried to boot into Window's normal mode, safe mode, and command line... all just restart fdisk -l gives the following:
Trying to install Fedora 12 using the 6 CDs. Trying to install on an older x86 box.Problem is that when detecting my hard drive, Fedora 12 recognizes it as a sda hard drive instead of hda hard drive. I have no SCSI connected to my computer what so ever. It's an old fashion PATA Western Digital hard drive.If I proceed with the install, Fedora 12 only installs 200MB of the OS from the first CD only. No options for additional software or anything.
I installed Ubuntu 7.10 on my desktop a month ago before I left my apartment for winter break. It worked beautifully for the week I used it, but now the computer won't boot. I'm using the ubuntu live cd right now to type this. I can't install it over my last hdd because apparently both of my hdds aren't bootable. I unplugged the computer for the month I was gone and the BIOS date reset to 2004. I'm not sure if that affected anything, whether I need to replace the CMOS battery? The computer was built in 2004 so I'm thinking the battery might be old. Basically the computer functions on the live cd, just won't boot from either hdd.
Out of nowhere Ubuntu (intrepid, I believe) has stopped loading for me. When it attempts to load gdm the screen starts flashing at the splash screen and then eventually dumps me to the terminal. From there I can login without any problems but can not get the GUI to load.
When I run sudo gdm-binary it does the flashing splash screen again and then spits out the error message: WARNING: Unable to find users: no seat-id found. Then a few warnings about longest graphic displayed 2.5xxx seconds I tried running sudo dpkg-recondifigure gdm and relaunch gdm as above and it did the same thing.
I was not able to successfully connect to my wireless network through the terminal to try to update in the hopes of that fixing the problem. Perhaps someone can give me instructions on how? (I have tried but can not figure out how to initialize wlan0).
Or, is there something I can do from my installation CD?
I have a problem with my hard disk...this HHD had no OS just data in some linux file system....i tired to plug it in a windows OS and backup the files....but now the HHD file systems shows RAW. Now when i plug in fedora 15 OS the HHD is not mountable. I tried to # grub-install /dev/dbc1 but it give me an error. error "Bios driver not found" What can i do to restore my file system so i can recover my data?
This is my sons Asus eee pc 1005peb ( have one exactly like it and never happened to me)
The screen flashes on bootup and makes it very hard if not impossible to login and the gnome menu at the top is gone too. I do not know what he did to it. But I am loading meego on it now.
I tried to install ubuntu 10.10 today through livecd. but the partitions in my 60gb samsung harddisk are not detected. My entire harddisk is shown as unallocated free space. Also gparted is not detecting the partitions as well. I am currently not facing any problems with my partitions in windows xp. I tried the solution given here (to no avail): [URL]. I have had no such problems with previous versions of ubuntu.
