Ubuntu Installation messup

garthv

Ok,
I installed Ubuntu last night and everything seemed to install perfect until I went to reboot the machine. I had the GRUB loader installed on my master hard drive and the actual OS installed on my slave and when it went to boot GRUB I get an error saying :

Loading GRUB ;
ERROR 21
...

Now I cant even get into my machine/boot into windows,
How do I fix it????????

Mutant_Fruit

If you didn't install grub to the default place, reinstall linux putting grub to the default place (make sure it detects windows before you install it).

If it doesn't detect windows, boot off your XP cd, go into the recovery console thingy and run fixboot and fixmbr. That should make windows bootable, and remove grub.

Then reinstall grub into the default location.

However, if you did install grub to the default location, try setting it to install to your secondary harddrive instead of your primary, and that should help.

garthv

I installed GRUB to the default location which was my master drive(the one with windows on it). Ill try booting from xp cd when I get home. How do i remove grub?

Enygma

'fdisk /mbr' from DOS should get rid of it.

maxheadroom

GaRtH_V wrote:

I installed GRUB to the default location which was my master drive(the one with windows on it). Ill try booting from xp cd when I get home. How do i remove grub?

You need to get to the recovery console and then type fixmbr press enter, let it do its thing, and then possibly fixboot.

dahamsta

Use the LiveCD to mount the drive and fix your grub.conf.

http://www.google.ie/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=grub+%22error+21%22

tomk

dahamsta wrote:

Use the LiveCD to mount the drive and fix your grub.conf.

If you need a hand with that, post you're grub.conf here, and we'll make some suggestions.

eggshapedfred

according to this grub is looking for a partition that doesn't exist. if you boot using knoppix and edit grub.conf in the ubuntu install (/etc/grub.conf or /boot/grub/grub.conf) so that it points to the right partitions (Grub starts numbering from 0 so hda1 -> hd0,0 hda2 -> hd0,1 etc...) you should be fine (windows should be accessible then too)

scojones

fdisk /mbr and fixmbr won't do a thing, they only fix the mbr when windows messes it up, not when linux does. You need to use the ubuntu cd to boot into linux again so that you can edit grub.conf properly, the problem could be this... http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-grub/2003-02/msg00082.html or that you gave the wrong partition. A copy of your grub.conf would be helpful to us!

dahamsta

sjones wrote:

fdisk /mbr and fixmbr won't do a thing, they only fix the mbr when windows messes it up, not when linux does.

That's a bit of a misleading statement tbh. They'll write a new NTLDR MBR in there, which will get him into Windows. Strictly speaking it's not "fixing" things properly, but they will "do a thing", and they perform the same operation whether the damage was caused by Windows or Linux.

adam

angelofdeath

the ubuntu live cd has an option to boot to the first partition aswell, thought i might throw that in