Linux Mint 10 ''initrd'' booting problem

[ouaboa]

Hi everyone,

I have the following problem:
I recently installed Linux Mint 10 on my Acer Laptop (Windows XP home edition) with a live CD. The installation went well. The problem appeared on reboot. On the dual boot menu when I choose Linux mint 10, 2.6.35-22-generic (/dev/sda5), the boot hang up…black screen with a flashing cursor on the top left of the screen. Then I modified the GRUB by deleting the “quiet splash” to see where the problem is. The booting process stop here:
…
[1.005431] freeing initrd memory: 15824k freed.
Then nothing.

Here are the details of my GRUB for linux:

GNU GRUB version 1.98+2001008004-5ubuntu3-1mint1
----------------------------------------------------------------------
recordfail
insmod part_msdos
insmod ext2
set root=’(hd0,msdos5)’
search --no-floppy --fs –uuid –set 70f39063-36b0-48a8-8d33-5e56b4243f32
linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic root=uuid=-36b0-48a8-8d33-5e56b4243f32 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Details of my computer:
Acer Aspire 1410
1.3 GHz Inter Celeron M350 processor
512 MB DDR

No problem to boot back on Windows XP.
I tried manual command…nothing.
I tried to reboot with the live CD…nothing.

Is it a problem of physical memory or bad partitioning (for Linux: 15,7GB and 749MB)? Can you help me?? Did not find solutions on the net.
Thanks
Jean-Serge

[coopstah13]

you can't boot livecd anymore? make sure cd is first boot option before booting to livecd

if you can get into livecd we can try to diagnose the situation

[ouaboa]

Hi,
Thanks for the advice. Yes I was able to boot from the liveCD only one time...then I tried to see what was wrong, but I could not access the files. So I decided to format the entire HD with my Windows XP recovery CD to have a fresh system to start with. But on reboot, I obtained this message:

error: unknown filesystem
grub rescue>_

Its seems that the recovery CD did not intalled the good MBR or boot loader??
JS

[Jonathan183]

Try booting from the live CD again ... sounds like you have BIOS set to boot from HD first so system only attempts to boot from CD if HD boot code is missing. Try changing BIOS boot order.

[ouaboa]

Hi,
I was able to install Linux Mint 10 on my computer. This is the only OS on my computer now, no Windows. On reboot, same problem:

[1.005431] freeing initrd memory: 15820k freed.
Then nothing.

Booting with the LiveCD, I was able too see the pertition with Gparted...looks good
I looked at the grub.cfg file...looks good too...

What is the problem????
JS

[Jonathan183]

Try editing grub kernel parameters at boot - if the menu is displayed hit e to edit and remove
quiet splash
from the kernel line then ctrl + x to boot. Post back the last couple of lines you get before the system freezes.

If you don't get a grub menu before the system boots then press the shift key to display the menu ... then modify the entry as above.

Also try booting in recovery mode ...

[coopstah13]

bad iso download?