GRUB won't load after installation

[jesd]

Greetings,

I'm new to Linux but not to computers. I recently installed MEPIS 8.0 after enjoying my experience with it as a Live CD. After about a week of using it, I decided to remove WinXP since I didn't want to upgrade to Win7, and I installed MEPIS Linux as my only OS. Now that MEPIS is installed, I can't boot with it from the hard drive. GRUB never comes up at all and I get a flashing underscore with a dark screen. I have no other OS installed either and I only use one SATA hard drive. GRUB was installed to the MBR.

I tried rebooting with the LiveCD and I used the System MEPIS Assistant ->Repair System Boot and reinstalled GRUB to the MBR. I made sure "Use initrd" was checked. This didn't work. I then tried installing it to the root partition using this same menu--this didn't work either. Below is /sda1/boot/grub/menu.lst

timeout 15
color cyan/blue white/blue
foreground ffffff
background 0639a1

gfxmenu /boot/grub/message

title MEPIS at sda1, newest kernel
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1 nomce quiet splash vga=791 
initrd /boot/initrd.img
boot

title MEPIS at sda1, previous kernel (if any)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz.old root=/dev/sda1 nomce quiet splash vga=791 
boot

title MEPIS at sda1, kernel 2.6.27-1-mepis-smp
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-1-mepis-smp root=/dev/sda1 nomce quiet splash vga=791 
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-1-mepis-smp
boot

title MEMTEST
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin

BTW, I even tried installing other distros like Ubuntu and Debian and they have the same problem among others, so I reinstalled MEPIS again. I hope I can get this fixed before school starts in January otherwise I will have to go back to Windows again to do my school work. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

Post the output of sudo fdisk -l command here.

[jesd]

Thanks for the quick response. Here's the output of the command:

mepis1:/home/demo# sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000cadee

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1       38531   309500226   83  Linux
/dev/sda2           38532       38913     3068415   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 4063 MB, 4063232000 bytes
5 heads, 32 sectors/track, 49600 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 160 * 512 = 81920 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *          51       49600     3963968    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

I think /dev/sdb1 is my USB flash drive, if not I'm not mistaken.

[devils casper]

Remove quiet splash vga=791 options from kernel line in menu.lst file and check it display anything on reboot.

Does anything appear at startup? Are you sure that you Harddisk has been set as First Boot Device in BIOS and its not disabled?

[jesd]

Oh, I see what your saying. The hard disk is listed as second after the CD-ROM in the BIOS. I know this isn't an issue because I was running WinXP two days ago off the hard disk and I have not changed anything in the BIOS. I will remove the lines from menu.lst to see what happens.

[devils casper]

Problem is, GRUB Menu is not appearing at all. It means BIOS is not reading MBR of its harddisk at all or GRUB has not been installed there.

In case GRUB Menu doesn't appear after removing options from kernel line, re-install GRUB Manually.
There are a lot of ways to do that.

Boot up from Mepis LiveCD, open Terminal and execute this

sudo grub

You will get a grub prompt, grub>
Execute this:

find /boot/grub/stage1

If you get "Error 15: File not found", try the following:

find /grub/stage1

Using this information, set the root device (fill in X,Y with whatever the find command returned):

root (hdX,Y)
setup (hd0)
quit

Reboot machine.

[jesd]

I double checked the BIOS and the hard drive is listed right after the CD-ROM in the boot priority. I cannot make the hard drive have priority over CD-ROM unless I disable booting from the CD altogether.

After removing the /boot entry from the kernel and initrd lines, I still don't get anything but a blinking underscore at the top left hand corner of the screen. I then removed the splash entry and still GRUB does not show up.

I tried reinstalling GRUB manually like you said. I did this:

GNU GRUB  version 0.97  (640K lower / 3072K upper memory)

 [ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported.  For the first word, TAB
   lists possible command completions.  Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
   completions of a device/filename. ]

grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
 (hd0,0)

grub> root (hd0,0)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

grub> setup (hd0)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"...  18 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
 Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+18 p (hd0,0)/boot/grub/stage2
/boot/grub/menu.lst"... succeeded
Done.

grub> quit 

mepis1:/home/demo# reboot

It still does the same thing. I do find it strange that it says I have ext2fs, when I actually have ext3fs.

[jesd]

As weird as this sounds, because of my desperation to get a working OS, I decided to install Debian (since MEPIS is based on it). Though I could never get the Debian LiveCD to boot, I had better luck with the installation CD.

This time GRUB loaded without problems, but then the graphic installation hanged after the initial reboot. So then I booted again from the installation CD and reinstalled again this time using the text installer and everything worked without any problems.

I guess the moral of the story is just because the Live CD fails to boot it doesn't mean that the installation will also fail (unless it is the same CD). I did check all the MD5 signatures for all the Live CDs I tried and they checked out, but still they wouldn't work except for MEPIS Live.

I am now happily running Lenny on my desktop and it's great. Thank you so much for all your help.

[gnuuser]

I have found on some re installations of grub you will get error messages
I've found this frequently with ubuntu and mepis and I'm sure there are more!
Ive found that if you wipe the drive with d-ban and reinstall grub will load ok
Im sure there are other ways around this problem!
but I usually don't have a lot of time.