Ubuntu :: Grub Rescue On Netbook (With No Disc Optical Drive)
Jan 2, 2010
My girlfriend has a dual boot netbook I set up for her with Vista + 9.10. Her internet service went down yesterday temporarily and she was messing around with the computer to get back online and somehow booted into the Windows Rescue Partition and began the Windows Restore process, then turned the computer off during the middle of the restore process.It's her only computer and she lives 1800 miles away. And since it's a netbook there's no optical drive.
When she boots up now, the netbook goes straight into Grub Rescue mode. I got her to try most of the commands for Grub Rescue, but most of them come back as "Unknown Command". The "LS" command works though, and she was able to get a list of partitions displayed.Does anyone know of some commands she could use try to boot back into 9.10 (assuming it's still there)? Or even boot into Windows? Specifically, is there a simple command that could be combined with "LS" to specify a partition and try to boot into it?
OpenSUSE 11.2 x86_64 KDE SC 4.4.3 Linux 2.6.34-rc6-29-desktop (from KERNEL:HEAD) HAL 0.5.13-4.2.1 udisks 1.0.0.git20100224-11.1 ASRock G43Twins-FullHD LGA 775 Intel G43 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard Samsung 22X DVDR DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S223Q (connected via SATA. detected as: /dev/sr0)
Discs are read by the drive when inserted (they are spun and the LED light on the drive lights up) but nothing happens after that.
I disconnected the SATA cable and tried a new SATA cable on a different SATA port and also tried a different SATA power cable but that did not fix anything.
I'm a linux/unbuntu n00b and having some major issues here. I am new to using Ubuntu and have been experimenting with it on my netbook as well as kubuntu and a few others. I love the linux alternatives to Windows. It started with me running Windows 7 Starter along side Ubuntu. I was trying to resize my Windows partition and give Ubuntu more space. I managed to somehow delete the wrong partition, making a very careless mistake. Long story short, my netbook is stuck at the grub rescue screen and I have been searching the net for about 3 hrs just tonight plus whatever time I spent last night searching and cannot get this fixed. I've tried booting from the flash drive using Unetbootin and it will say "Missing operating system" before the grub rescue prompt and I did change my boot sequence. I've also tried using some commands in grub rescue and got various messages such as, no such disk, no such partition, cannot find "grub_xputs", cannot find C/H/S values...
I have a Gateway LT21 netbook with a 250gb hdd. Any help is appreciated. I realize this is a common issue and has been posted a lot but I have searched and my issue is on going and I'm guessing its specific to my setup.
I dont know when k3b stopped working but have just gone to burn a disk and when opening it tells me
Quote: No optical drive found. K3b did not find any optical device in your system. Solution: Make sure HAL daemon is running, it is used by K3b for finding devices.
I can boot from cd and can mount cds from within Slackware but for some reason k3b insists that i don't have a drive.
Installed 10.10 netbook via Wubi on windows XP. After installing some updates and restarting all I get is "grub rescue>" command line. I now booted from a USB stick and used the bootinfoscript. Here are the results:
From the terminal, or a script, how can I determine the media type (CDDA, DVD, ISO, etc) of a mounted optical disc? I need this for an automated script on my headless media server - Fedora 12 64bit.
how to get a bash script to automatically launch when the optical drive mounts a disc, any type of disc - DVD, CD, data, etc. It seems like such a simple task but after weeks of searching I have yet to find a workable solution.
First time poster and recent Ubuntu adopter. I recently installed 10.10 on my main HD alongside a separate windows (xp) partition (it worked perfectly). Then I decided to get fancy and installed 10.10 to a flash drive directly from a live cd. I attempted to boot from the flash drive, and got a black screen with a blinking underscore for about 10 minutes, then I forcefully rebooted. Now, whenever I attempt to boot at all from my main HD I get "error: no such device and a ton of misc numbers. And the flash drive will not allow me to boot from it. Currently, I'm working within the Live CD.
I have a few projects I need to complete with Dreamweaver inside XP, so recovering it completely would be nice.
Code: Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 ============================= Boot Info Summary: ============================== => Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in partition #1 for (,msdos1)/boot/grub. => No boot loader is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdf
I'm trying to get a script to run whenever an optical disc is mounted by the system but can't get it to work. I'm running Fedora 12 64bit and the drive is SATA device sr0.
Following online guides, I created a new rule file called '10-my.rules' in '/etc/udev/rules.d' which contains the following:
But nothing happens when a disc is mounted. The script itself runs fine manually and is clearly evident when launched so the problem must be the rule file. I've tried changing the name of the rule file in a few incremental steps from 10-my.rule to 99-my.rule to no effect.
I've gathered some information about my optical drive using the udevadm tool. Here is the result of an info query:
I've tried to be clever but as usual I didn't think before acting and missed a small detail.
I have recently installed karmic (dual booting with Vista) on my dell xps laptop. The install went fine, I'm very happy with my new OS.
I bought a new Seagate 500GB portable external HDD. I got a bit over-excited and installed karmic on the external drive. This worked fine and I got a lovely (but slow to appear) Grub2 menu showing my vista and both ubuntu options.
My problem is that now, when I unplug the external drive, Grub fails and I get a grub rescue> prompt. So I need the external drive to be plugged in if I want to boot.
It seems I have done something to the grub configuration. I have read around the subject but I am not confident about how best to proceed.
I understand there is an 'advanced' option in the installer which will allow me to choose where to install grub. Presumably I want it on the internal drive so that I can boot without the external one plugged in.
Am I right in thinking I can just pop in my install disk and redo the installation?
If I indicate I want to install Grub on the internal drive, which partition should I aim for?
Will I get a grub option for booting to the external drive?
Will I be able to plug the external drive into a different machine and boot from it?
I haven't done anything with the fresh install on the external drive so I don't mind losing that.
I have an hp laptop and i had ubuntu on it for 3 years. my hard drive started to fail a while ago (i had ubuntu 10 on it until 1 week ago) and a then it all went black...I took the laptop to a repair shop, they told me it was the disc, so i bought a new disc, installed it on my laptop and reinstalled the new ubuntu 11. so far so good. i have now a working OS, internet connection and i can in fact type this message.
The thing is: all my files are on the old drive, which doesn't load/boot/start/read anymore. I have tested it on some friends's pc, tried a few HD disgnostic tools, they all send the same message: "fail"
I then tried to mount my old drive (with all my precious files in it) on my laptop as an external drive (usb) hoping that ubuntu 11 could read it as an external usb key: it gets read by the system, but it shows no files at all. it also shows an error message saying the drive can not be mounted, with some "sdb1" thing. i am sorry but i'm really dumb when it comes to tech language.
Then i tried to boot it on start-up but i got the grub rescue> thing and nothing else, just a sad, blinking cursor to recover my files,i have also tried testdisk but couldn't understand very well how to use it, and then photorec, from which i recovered bits and pieces of files, with no name. some of them are just parts some of them are complete.
My problem is: i have to get access to my files, as I use them for work, i couldn't do a back-up recently and i have some real important deadline to meet... for which i need those files. is there any way i could solve the grub issue and have that drive load/mount again as external usb?
I have just installed 11.3 x64. The installation went fine and worked for the first few hours. I ran the online update tool, and now it cannot find grub unless the installation disc is inserted and I select the "boot from hard disc" option.
I have read about the problem of the root partition being back, but not sure that's it.
sda1 - swap sda2 - / sda3 - /home
There used to be a repair tool in the installation disks. I could not find that in this media. Is that still available?
Is there any dvd drive with longevity? The boxes in this "normal" house have had 100% failures on dvd writers and readers in recent years. I'm an electronics guy and know why this happens - minute changes in the careful balance on the reading head, not helped by the facts that:
1. low grade adjustable resistors are often used
2. The range of adjustment is far too great, making it impossible to retain a stable preset value.
3. Optical diodes lose forward voltage drop over time. If they start at, e.g. 1.2V after some months or years the forward voltage will be down to 1.0V. This changes the current, hence the brightness.
So if I boot without a DVD or CD in my optical drive, then I attempt to put one it, it doesn't mount. I try mounting with the terminal and that fails as well. If I boot with the media in the optical drive, it works fine. (this problem occurs both on my desktop and laptop and I know the DVD and CD's work in both 9.10 and in windows, This error also occurs with Linux Mint and Sabayon leading me to believe this is a kernel issue).
[Code]...
What do I need to do to get this to work like it should? I have been asking about this since the beta of 10.04
I have this rather old Compaq Presario 2184 (Celeron processor), with a completely busted optical drive - which means I cant boot from Live CD, and it doesn't boot from USB, either... which means I cant use a live memory stick, either. It's currently running Xubuntu 9.04.
I'm seriously running short of space on my root partition - can't upgrade to 9.10...
I had a Windoze partiion that I decided to remove, using Gparted. Identified the NTFS partition, right click, delete. After that, I couldn't do anything else... I then found this page, that told me that I cant resize all partitions while booting from hard drive, and that I needed a Live CD. For the reasons mentioned above, that's just not possible...
Are there any alternatives that the good folks here can suggest? For example, can I create a new partition, and move my entire /usr there? It would solve the space problem, but I'm not confident of doing it without screwing up something... could someone kindly guide me through the process?
I updated yesterday and now when I start my laptop it goes in to grub rescue mode. I have booted from a 'live cd' and thought I could repair grub from there. In gparted however the partition with ubuntu (sda1) is seen as unknown file system, in terminal when I list the partition table it shows up as FAT16 type. When I try a grub-install it gives this error message:
Upgraded from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 via upgrade manager System is AMD 64 Have dual boot with XP on seperate hard drive
[code]....
Then the wheelspin:
Seem to have knocked out GRUB as normal loading screen does not appear anymore. Worse, I think I accidently installed grub to something labelled SDC5.
Cannot get anything except the "grub rescue" prompt. I'm not sure if using the LiveCD (9.10) can help. Have tried a few prompts from other threads but just ended up with mud splattered all over the place. I'm gathering I need to load grub, but can I do it using any grub rescue commands?
Yesterday I partitioned my hard drive with kubuntu netbook remix and windows 7. after a few hours and reboots i turned on my computer and it said Grub loading. unknown filesystem rescue grub> It looks like allot of people have been having similar errors recently with windows 7.
In my laptop, the optical drive cannot burn dvds. If I get an external usb optical drive do I have to initialize it and how? Also do I have to install some particular packages?
I have a pc with linux mint installed, and wanted to try edubuntu with my kids. The first time we tried, it booted just fine from the dvd, as the bios is already set to boot from dvd as priority. So it ran off of RAM.
Subsequent tries however, result in the pc booting mint from the hdd, and no sign of edubuntu at all. I have tried different distros/isos, but to no avail. I have also opened the box to see if the dvd drive had somehow come unplugged.
My cdrom was sort of working, but the tray was physically damaged. The usb was working without a problem.
After replacing the the cdrom drive with a similar model known to work well I could not get it to mount. I then tried to move important files to usb to try a fresh install. The usb stick flickered when I put it in, but it didn't mount. Same behaviour as the cdrom, the light goes on when I turn on the computer, but once I'm logged in I can't access the cdrom.
I have tried multiple variations of playing with fstab and trying to mount things in terminal to no avail. I just can't get Ubuntu to recognize the usb or cdrom even though their lights go on when I first try to use them.
So I wanted to get rid of ubuntu 10.10 on my HP pavilion dv6 laptop as I wanted to make some hd space. Its a dual boot with windows 7. I deleted the ubuntu partition and expanded the windows partition to fill the whole hard drive again. When I restarted my laptop I got the "error: no such partition. Grub rescue>" message.
I tried inserting my ubuntu 10.10 boot cd but whenever I boot from the cd I get the exact same grub rescue error. Is it possible to remedy this situation from the error? I am currently unable to download a windows recovery cd so I'm stuck in the grub rescue page unless its possible to fix this mess from the error prompt.
Optical Out from my TV into the SPDIF / Optical In on my PC Optical Out from my PC into my Sony 5.1 Theatre Kit
The audio from the PC comes through ok when listening to music and movies. But unfortunately I can figure out how to enable the audio passthrough from my Tv so that the audio comes out of my theatre kit. In Sound Preferences, the hardware is set to 1 Output / 1 Input [Digital Stereo (IEC95 Output + Digital Stereo (IEC95 Input]. When I click on the audio tab, the Input Volume is at 100% and the Input Level is moving in conjunction with the audio coming from the Tv.
I saw it mentioned in another thread to install Gnome Alsa Mixer which I've done, it seeems to identify the audio chipset as Realtek ALC882, the motherboard is an Abit AB9 Pro. Hopefully I'm missing some config somewhere or there a box I should be ticking but I just can't find it.
I've just gotten a gateway netbook I'd love to throw a copy of ubuntu on. However, before I install I'd like to create a backup factory install disc. The problem is I don't have a DVD drive in my netbook.Is there a DVD writer program for Windows or something similar that would simulate the presence of a DVD drive and allow a backup DVD to be written to it?
I tried to burn a cd today and k3b told me it couldn't find an optical device. It suggested making sure HAL was running, it is. Nothing has changed except auto upgrades, so I tried an apt-get upgrade to see if that would make a difference. It didn't. Burning has never been an issue before, and googling all day hasn't provided any answers, apart from finding /etc/init.d/hal The permissions haven't been changed.
james@Lenny:~$ ls -l /media total 8 drwxr-x--- 2 root root 4096 Feb 12 00:14 apt lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Jan 21 2009 cdrom -> cdrom0 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 21 2009 cdrom0
I have a strange problem with my DVD player. The problem: My device seems not to read any CD (it does read DVDs). Prologue: On a previous installation I had the same problem. But after messing up with that system I made a re-install, and the problem was gone. So I wasn't concerned about the problem any longer. That would be fine, but recently I had to make a new re-install to have space for windows. (I know, I'm a sinful man) But now the problem is there again. And it even is there under windows.
Question: In how far is the hardware damaged or is it a software problem since it once worked? Hardware data:
-Systems: Fedora 12 & Vista -Laptop: Dell Studio 1555 -Drive: Optiarc Model: DVD+-RW AD-7640S Rev: HD18
What I have been doing to fix the problem:
-I made an update of the firmware and bios with the files provided by dell -cleaned the lenses (with a clean disc) -checked log files (both windows and linux)
After setting udev to debug logging I received this
I seem to be having a problem with burning CDs. Whenever I launch k3b, it says 'No optical drive found.' However, When I insert a CD while in KDE, it properly mounts it. What do I do? It seems like udev/hal is working fine. Also, I can't get KDE to recognize any inserted flash drive or external usb storage device inserted on demand.
Hardware is a Supermicro with C2SBC-Q board, have set up a RAID1 with 3 WD drives, the BIOS "sees" the "LightScribe" DVD drive but it is not being recognized by CentOS (5.2 x86_64). It's on an IDE bus, set to "master".# dmesg | grep -E 'CD|DVD|hdc' produces a new prompt with NO feedback, BTW.I have CentOS 5.2 i386 running on this machine with the same DVD drive, it was not an issue.
