Boot from live but not HD [c] [resolved]

[ldiener]

Hello,

My kids tell me they were playing a web-based game the other day when the system froze up. I wasn't here when it happened so I'm not sure I'm getting the whole story regarding what they tried after it froze up but here's the situation I'm trying to work through...

Relatively new system, home built, clean install of Kubuntu 7.10 followed by installation of LinuxMCE 7.10. It's been working great for about two months. Zero issues.

System is an AMD2/Asus M2N-SLI board/2G ram
two SATA drives - 500GB hd + 1TB HD
NVIDIA 6100 graphics
Hauppauge PVR-500 video capture card

If I attempt a normal boot, I get the BIOS screen followed by a black screen with a blinking underscore in the upper left corner of the screen.

If I use the Kubuntu 7.10 Live CD and select boot from first HD, the system boots up just fine and everything looks like it always has.

If I then try the regular boot again, I'm back to the blinking cursor.

Here's what I've tried:

I booted from the SuperGrub cd and attempted to repair the GRUB boot menu.

I ran fsck -y -t /dev/hda1 and it came back clean, no errors.

I tried doing a clean install of Kubuntu and the boot issue persisted: Live CD works, Live CD to 1st HD works, HD only does not work.

Any thoughts on what else I can try here?

Thanks,

Larry

[toad]

Re: Boot from live but not HD [c]

Let's watch the boot process... Remove "quiet splash" from the kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst and watch.

What does it come up with?

BTW, I've ALWAYS wanted MCE!!! So jealous.

[ldiener]

Re: Boot from live but not HD [c]

Thanks. After reinstalling Kubuntu 7.10 and attempting to boot from the HD, I get the message:

"Error 15: File not found Press any key to continue"

Pressing a key puts me into the GRUB menu with the following options:
---
Ubuntu 7.10, kernal 2.6.22-14-generic
Ubuntu 7.10, kernal 2.6.22-14-generic (recovery mode)
Ubuntu 7.10, memtest86+
---

I selected the first and edited the kernal line to remove quiet splash, then I pressed b to boot. I get "Error 15: File not found Press any key to continue" regardless of which selection I make.

Trying another complete reinstall from the live CD...
Pressed F6 to edit options, removed quiet spash, pressed enter to begin

lots of stuff scrolls by but nothing that indicates [fail] or errors other than a few attempts to access dev fd0 (I do not have a floppy installed on this system)

Boot to KDE desktop, initated install using icon on desktop.
clicked through the following setup options...
Language - English
Where are you? - New York (NC really)
Keyboard layout - U.S. English
Prepare disk space - I choose "guided - use entire disk" and select the second option:
SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda) - 1.0 TB ATA Hitachi HDS72101
*SCSI3 (0,0,0) (sdb) - 500.1 GB ATA ST3500320AS

Ready to install...

...The following partitions are going to be formatted:
partition #1 of SCSI3 (0,0,0) (sdb) as ext3
partition #5 of SCSI3 (0,0,0) (sdb) as swap

Accept default under "Advanced" to install boot loader and click install...

Creating ext3 file system for / in partition #1 of SCSI3 (0,0,0) (sdb)... 5%
Scanning files... 18%
Copying files... 60% system unexpectedly reboots.

starting over... :-(

Larry

[toad]

Re: Boot from live but not HD [c]

To recap:

1. We can forget about MCE as you are not installing MCE itself but put it onto 7.10 later.
2. You installed 7.10 successfully on hda but could not boot from it directly after a virgin install

Sounds like your hda is on its way out/has gone.

Can you do a check on it using fsck?

I am no expert on failing discs since it has never happened to me (fingers crossed) but if the above is correct then it very much looks like that is one thing you ought to consider.

[ldiener]

Re: Boot from live but not HD [c]

Thanks again.

Correct. LMCE is not in the picture at this time.

Install is actually on sdb. Last attempt was not successful but previous were.

fsck -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 -y

/dev/sdb1: clean, 26053/60393120 files, 2231771/120577857

looks good.

[ldiener]

Re: Boot from live but not HD [c] [resolved]

It seems that my Seagate drive went south. I've pulled it out of the machine and will be sending it back to Seagate. Thankfully it's still under warranty!

I reinstalled the system from the LinuxMCE DVD on the Hitachi drive. It completed without issue. I'm now reconfiguring the system. I lost all my recordings and will have to reconfigure things but at least it appears to be working.

Toad, thanks for your willingness to help.

Regards,

Larry

[toad]

Re: Boot from live but not HD [c] [resolved]

Glad you got it sorted and marked the thread as solved as well

At the risk of imposing myself on you, but I am really interested in how you use LMCE!

I once installed it on a spare drive and it ran the talk through by that woman. I didn't have a telly to plug in but tried my DVBT USB device which I don't think it recognised

On the other hand I was impressed by its immediate desire to rip a CD I put in the drive I was also able to view a DVD but found no way of ripping it onto disk as a 4.4GB iso. Can that be done via MCE or does one have to revert back to k9copy in KDE?

Also, do you have a working remote? There is this great vid on youtube with a wireless mouse which reacts to movements in three dimensional space, don't know whether you've seen it. I've been looking out for one of those in Europe but no joy so far.

Tons of questions, sorry about that