GRUB Boot malfunction

Esther Yuen-Parrish · May 13, 2013

CANT GET PAST INTEL LOGO SCREEN! WON'T BOOT AT ALL! NOTE: Please reply to this realizing that I don't know nothing about computers. Thanks. Pictures or diagrams in easy to understand for layman's terms would be appreciated.

After attempting to resize my harddrive for a duelboot..I managed to lose all access to my pc. It won't get past logo screen. Can't get to boot menu or install startup disks. I Messed up my boot ability. All attempts to install OS disks have failed to show up on monitor. All I see is factory logo color graphic with 'intel Desktop Boards...Integrity to build on...Pentium4 intel inside on screen upon turning on my desktop. Nothing can seem to get me past this on the screen. Pressing all the function keys to try and get to boot menu have failed, as well. I have tried several different install disk, F2, F8. F12, shut down & restarted several times. Unplugged and plugged back in as well but still no difference.

I did remove the harddrive, put it in another computer to check it out. The drive does have my files still intact. The flag for boot was gone though and the swap was turned off. I remarked it as BOOT and the turned the swap on (which was the way it was before but it would not allow me to resize it back to using all the drive again. I was glad that the files were all there though. There are some unallocatted spots between the SWAP that I did not have before though so not sure what the deal with that is. Anyway I really don't think it is the drive because it worked in other pc, even though it may not be set correctly.

So...did I ruin the motherboard? My son was the one that told me to just boot to live cd to search for REPAIR GRUB/BOOT in live cd of OS, but I can't get to it to do this.
I even tried to do what someone suggested to turn on while pressing the Shift Key down. I tried it but still nothing. This did work for me before a long time ago to get to the place where I could key in F2 or F10, F12 and change boot settings and then boot from disk or to go into Safe mode and to Use last Good Configuration points but this is not working either this time.

ksham · May 13, 2013

Okay. We'll do it via the old fashion CLI. Boot up a LiveCD and open a terminal. Then follow these steps. (Everything between ` and ' are CLI commands. Just copy-pasta if you cannot type them correctly.)

1. `su -' # there is a space between su and -
2. `fdisk -l' # on some newer systems, `gdisk -l'. Find the Linux partition. It would be sda#. It would say 'Linux' under System.
3. `mount /dev/sda# /mnt'
4. `grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda'

After that, it should be good. If your partition is not sda but sdb or whatever, make the appropriate changes. If you get an error in grub-install command, then get a LiveCD that has grub-install. Any modern one does like Knoppix.

If it is successful, it will say that the installation was successful.

5. `shutdown -r now' # to reboot

Once loaded, verify that the boot loader works. It may not be updated, so log into your Linux OS (not Windows or whatever else it was). Once loaded, open a terminal and execute:

6. `sudo update-grub'

That's it. I hope that solves your issue.

Esther Yuen-Parrish · May 13, 2013

ksham :

Okay. We'll do it via the old fashion CLI. Boot up a LiveCD and open a terminal. Then follow these steps. (Everything between ` and ' are CLI commands. Just copy-pasta if you cannot type them correctly.)[/quotemsg=10799855,0,1291079 ]

Does not Boot from disk. That is why I can't do this.
This is what I did try.
Intel site said to:
Make sure all newly installed devices or components were installed completely as they should be. That they are securely seated, jumpers in drives placed right, and if a new graphics card put in that they may need more power to run upgrades and that they may need to be taken out and put back in.
This may have something to do with my problem with the motherboard being messed up. I put in another graphics card to see if it would work but then could not get it to work right so I took it out. After that I noticed that mouse started to not work all the time. I restarted it and then still had issues with it so I retarted again but then got nothing but the Intel screen and could not longer Boot right.

Oh and guess what....usb connections don't work either. I do have one working and I am using the purple (older) plug for the keyboard. To turn off computer I can hit Ctrl Alt Del to get it to shut off and quickly restarts again so I have to turn off power supply switch to get it to stay off.

1)So I put in jumpers in drives that I added.---They were not in right before
2)I made sure all cords and devices are in tightly. ---Put in a new sata cable, that was tighter fit
3)Tried to use Live CD's to get to boot screen --- NO LUCK
4)Had of course kept out the Graphics Card I took out before and will not put it back in. ---I was most likely what wrecked things (in hind sight)
5)Searched Intel forums for anything I could find
6)Worry of how much this is gonna be worth my time and efforts to no avail, for nothing.... :heink:

Thinking of adding another spot for a good burial for all the computers I managed to mess up.

Well anyway Thanks again...Hope I can get the answer to this.

Esther Yuen-Parrish · May 13, 2013

Hey guess what? I got the INSTALL XubuntuLiveCD to work using advice from Intel forum
1)Intel recommended to try and unplug or take out...all devices that are not needed for powering up motherboard and anything else that was not needed to initiate system. They said to then power up and see if it boots up again.
Then they said to try to add devices one at a time to see if the issue comes back. If it does then they recommended to NOT install that device again as it may either be faulty, not compatible or maybe lacks drivers or something that does not jive with system.
So once you get to all your installed devices and you can boot up again, normally then you are done.
I will try this.....
So far so good with these steps:
I left in Power supply /cord of course...plus A) Monitor,B) Keyboard,C) Mouse,D) the main DVD/RW drive) E)WiFi card that was in it and working okay before failure to boot.
I took out A) all added(2x) installed card for usb ports, B)CDRW drive, multi SDCard Reader C)Floppy drive D)HardDrive, even

I had disk in the computer DVD Drive before powering up again and then just let disk go.....
I SAW THE NORMAL LIVE CD STARTING LOGO TO RUN AS NORMAL...
I THEN SAW IT ASK ME TO CHOOSE TO TRY OR INSTALL OPERATING SYSTEM
I CHOOSE TO TRY AND IT WENT TO LIVE DESKTOP FOR XUBUNTU 12.10
********************************************************************
NOW I WILL HAVE TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS NOW...????? I AM SCARED BUT HOPEFULLY IT WILL WORK AGAIN WHEN I PUT THINGS BACK IN....
STARTING WITH HARDDRIVE FIRST, I GUESS.

ksham · May 13, 2013

Were you using Xubuntu LiveCD before too? If not, what LiveCD did you try before? My guess is that you made a bad disk.

Esther Yuen-Parrish · May 14, 2013

ksham :

Hello again,
I couldn't get the computer to boot to live disks after reconnecting the hard drive. I got the Intel screen again.
I unplugged the hard drive and tried to get the install disk with Ubuntu10.04 and Xubuntu 12.04, Xubuntu 12.10 and Raring Ringtail (Xubuntu's latest that I burned as a iso file on DVD. All these disks worked great to install on 3 other desktops I dual booted with Window OS. So I don't see the disks being a problem.
I really feel that it was my attempt to install the Graphics card from 128 to 256. Most likely the motherboard was not able to handle it.
I then resized the hard drive as well and most likely did not do this correctly.
After attempting the resize so I could attempt to install Windows to it made the originally installed (years ago) with Ubuntu 10.04 on it. I probably should have left it alone since I had no problems with Ubuntu10.04 and loved it. Plus all my files were on it. Now I don't think I can restore this computer at all.
I am sure someone could for lots of money but I don't really want to put in hundreds of dollars for such an old PC. It was just an attempt to try and learn how to make it work better and faster and also to just clean it up for someone who can't afford to buy a new computer.

UPDATE on it as of now:
I continued to try and get it to boot to LiveVersion with Ubuntu10.04 DVD I have used and also by downloading it again from Ubuntu by using a program from Software Center program that does this for all versions of OS's available through them. It game me option to download and burn to disc or to put on flashdrive. I did both.
I will try to boot to live Xubuntu12.10 disk later to see if I can get the issues with boot to fix but I don't think it will work, especially since I now have other issues arise while I was on Live Ubuntu10.04. It works fine for a while but then I get black screen with messages that Ubuntu does not have full support for this older version and also that there was some issues with the lose of battery charge???? Which is odd since it is a PC that is plugged in and is not on a battery like in a laptop. It read that it was checking battery to find out some issues with it and other things. But I waited for it to finish for a few hours but nothing happened. So I tried to hit CTRL Alt Del to shut off but this time it did not work. I had to hold down on/off button for a long time to force shut down.
I tried to see if I could have better luck next time in Ubuntu LiveCD but NO LUCK...I got same error messages 3 more times.

I will try Xubuntu disk to see if I have better luck. I will let you know what happens with this.

Oh and like I said earlier my hard drive does work on other PC when I put it in it along side the hard drive that is in it or even when I just use it alone.

ksham · May 14, 2013

I'm confused. So you can boot into the LiveCD? Your second post says that you can't. If you can now, have you tried running those commands?

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GRUB Boot malfunction

Esther Yuen-Parrish

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Esther Yuen-Parrish

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