Grub installation; fatal error

[immy00100]

hello everybody am new here and need help about grub installation, my system only have one disk drive which is sata 250gb =)
i requested cd of kubuntu a little while back because i did't had a fast connection to download it i received it and tried to install it so many times everything went well till the grub install, i get the error grub install error hd0,4, this is a fatal error i dont know why i searched a lot and still no luck in installing kubuntu here is a screen shot on my first drive /dev/sda1 it is windows xp installed and its primary partition, i have only one 250gb sata hard disk with 5 partitions 1 primary and 4 logical extended. now i tried so many grub installation path. i need a solution i really want to install it and i want multi boot it with my xp i want it to install on my second partition /dev/sda5 what should i write as grub install path.

this my disk configuration screen


this is the final screen of installation

[immy00100]

Re: Grub installation; fatal error

some more information about my bios drives configuration it may clear how my drive is connected

IDE channel 0 master - [Asus DVD-rom]
IDE channel 0 slave - [none]
IDE channel 1 master - [none]
IDE channel 1 slave - [none]
IDE channel 2 master - [western digital 250gb]
IDE channel 3 master - [none]

my motherboard have 2 ide slots and 2 sata slots on it. if my hard disk is on no.2 master is it means i need to write hd2 on grub.

i tried hd0,4 because i want to install grub on the same partition where i am installing kubuntu.

[dibl]

Re: Grub installation; fatal error

Hmmmm -- this is a bit of a mess! Among other questions that come to mind, what happened to partitions 2, 3, and 4?

I'm going to recommend a rip-up and restart. It may be that something less draconian might work, but if you want to raise your chances of success, here are some things to do.

1. Unless there's some good reason not to do it, make your hard drive IDE channel 0 Master, and make the CD/DVD drive IDE channel 0 slave, or channel 1 master.

2. You are missing a partition for Linux swap, and your partitions are weirdly mis-numbered, and you have 8GB of unused space. I would re-partition the entire hard drive, using a GParted Live CD, which you get from here
I would make 2 partitions for my Windows stuff -- one of about 12GB for the OS and programs, and the other one a NTFS formatted partition for Windows data. Then I would make 3 partitions for Linux as follows:

8GB for /
0.5 GB for swap
the rest of it for /home

If you cannot re-partition those NTFS partitions for some reason, then you could use your 8GB unused space for your Linux "/", and split the current sda5 into a small 0.5 for swap, and the rest of it for /home. Both "/" and "/home" can be formatted to ext3 or reiserfs, whichever you wish. Linux swap is a special filesystem format that it will take care of automatically

3. With those changes, you can try to reinstall, and you might have a chance of coming up with a working system. When it gets to the "guided partitioning", you won't have to make partitions, all you will need to do is show it the mount points for the 3 Linux partitions that I listed above, and you can go by the size of them to know which mount point goes where.

Good luck with it!

[immy00100]

Re: Grub installation; fatal error

i did't understand why you recommended 3 partitions usually they are 2, one for swap and other one for linux install. and the unused space is 8 MB not 8GB so that idea of making it usefull is no more. i cant re format my hard disks and make partitions from scratch because i have enough data where should i put it all or i'll end up with a new system not a single usefull file =/

if i am not wrong i dont need swap partition because i have 1gb of ram, i thought swap comes up when ram is low is it? i want to install to install linux on my second partition on sda5 which is D:
i dont know where sda1,2,3,4 gone any idea some one please? i am really messed up dont know what to do?!?!?! someone may come up with better idea some one?

and thanks dibl for your reply =)

[immy00100]

Re: Grub installation; fatal error

kindly have a look in the in windows screenshot of partition manager


and have a look then recommend i already told i cant do anything to make them better my hard disk is sata now see below my slots chart.

[Fintan]

Re: Grub installation; fatal error

First off you need swap. Period.
Second it is always a good idea to have seperate /home and / (linux root) partitions.

My suggestion would be the following:
-Delete the linux partition.
-Move your windows partitions over to the "left" so they are all together and free space at the end of your HD.
-Resize your games partition to say 80 gigs (you are only using 23 of 100 gigs)
that will give you some more free space.
-Make one /swap partition 1gig
-Make one / partition 8-10 gig and format as ext3
-Make one /home partition with the rest and formated as ext3

A note of caution: Don't do all these steps at once. One at a time can save a lot of agravation

Then go through the installation as you did before with manual partitioning assigning the /home and / partitions to the appropriate places. /swap is usually seen automaticly.. Install and have fun

[immy00100]

Re: Grub installation; fatal error

but the same question resist the new partitions will be them sda8,9,10 8for lets say linux, 9 for /home, 10 for swap? so whats the catch will it be then able to install linux?

what if i manage to free my primary partition which is sda0? what do you say? linux on firsat and windows on second sda5?? can somebody define what are the use of linux partition home and swap

i think linux partition have linux os on it only, /home get all the stuff softwares songs or i dont know and swap partition is for swap. what is swap?

[immy00100]

Re: Grub installation; fatal error

now installed it all up grub installed, but i am having error while i start computer invadil boot disk, replace disk and press enter to continue am i wrong some where?