[SOLVED] Unable to boot properly

[sorch]

I am running the latest suse release downloaded directly from their website. I ran the installation after buring the dvd and everything seemed to be working fine. after the installation i ran updates and used it for a little bit. When i shut it down that night and went to restart it I got an error that stated the OS wasnt there. I then went through the installation and everything and it retained the information from the installation before (web history etc.) but for some reason every time I reboot or shut it down the system is not able to read the startup information from the hard drive and will not come on without me re installing it. Please help me with some ideas on how to repair this problem.

[someuser]

Do a checksum on the installer that you downloaded. It sounds like you may have gotten a bad image.

[sorch]

Thanks for the reply,

I have been doing some testing and found out it is somewhere within the BIOS i believe i just dont know where.

What i did to find this is i attempted to install a windows XP disk that i have and it did the same thing, after the initial install when it came time to reboot it was not able to find the startup information. which seems to be the same problem no matter what OS i try to install on the machine nor what hard drive i use.

Please help me, i have been searching for over a week with no luck


Thanks
Sorch

[someuser]

If you can boot from the CD, open a terminal and run

su -
fdisk -l

Post the output here (wrapped in tags).

[sorch]

the out put is as follows

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 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: 0xb74510e2

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1         262     2103296   82  Linux swap / Solaris
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2   *         262        2873    20972544   83  Linux
/dev/sda3            2873        9730    55073792   83  Linux

[someuser]

Do this:

grub-install

[sorch]

this is the output i got from that

linux-ponq:~ # grub-install


    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> setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 --force-lba (hd0,1) (hd0,1)
 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 (hd0,1)"... failed (this is not fatal)
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0,1)"... failed (this is not fatal)
 Running "install --force-lba --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0,1) /boot/grub/stage2 p /boot/grub/menu.lst "... succeeded
Done.
grub> setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 --force-lba (hd0) (hd0,1)
 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)"...  17 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
 Running "install --force-lba --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+17 p (hd0,1)/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/menu.lst"... succeeded
Done.
grub> quit

[sorch]

Thank you so much that did the trick, It came right up and gave me the option to boot from the hard drive, and loaded perfectly.

[someuser]

If you decide to dual boot Windows, you will need to install grub again. Be careful not to install it on the Windows partition.

[sorch]

Ok, Thanks for the tip.

I Think i will stick with this for awhile I am actually falling in love with the OS and the features. It just takes a little getting used to and the support from a great community like this one, and a great user like yourself

Thanks again for the help