Hey Folks. Happy New Year !

I just purchased a newer HP machine off ebay, (Cheap, $39)

It came with no OS. I don't have the exact specs in front of me, but I know it has plenty of ram(8gb), came with a decent sized hdd, not sure about the others, as i'm not in front of the machine.

Long story short, i'm still very new to Linux, and decided to install Ubuntu on it. Went through the installation just fine, and booted up my machine and it goes right to the grub-rescue> prompt . I've never had this experience before, and am doing plenty of googling / research besides this thread. Just wanted to know if anyone else might have had this issue, or if it sounds like a hardware issue ?

Just for kicks, I took a newly formatted 750gb drive and put that in the box, and installed ubuntu on that, and still am plagued with the same results.

I'm not in front of my machine at the moment as I stated, so I don't have exact error messages for you. But I do know, I went to the boot prompt, and tried booting from the hdd that way, and had the same results. If this thread progresses, I will let you guys know what error messages were displayed. Thanks for your help in advance, and I hope this is considered the right thread section.

(Also, I just want to include, that even though the Ubuntu install was successful, and it wouldn't boot, I tried running Ubuntu from my live usb, and accessing 'cfdisk' to see what was going on, and it said there was some sort of 'fatal error', and I could not access the partition. After I read this, I booted a slackware installation cd, and was able to access cfdisk, delete the whole partition table (that ubuntu wrote successfully), and start from scratch, but still had the same errors)

Just trying to give you guys as much information as possible. Thanks

It sounds like something went wrong with the grub install, but from the information you give it's hard to exactly tell what.

If you're getting the grub rescue prompt, the hard drive is being detected and booted from, as grub runs from the HDD.

Is this a BIOS or a UEFI box? AFAIK cfdisk can not work with a GPT disk, but I do not know exactly what error you'll get. If it's a UEFI box, you'll need to use gdisk to partition, although the installer should have figured this out (unless you already had an MBR scheme on there, it may have then worked with that).

Even if you had to wait until you were in front of the box, more information to start would have helped to get better responses. That statement (and it could just be me) gives me the impression you're only willing to help us help you after we start taking shots in the dark.

I appreciate the input. But no, I am not expecting any shots in the dark. I am at work, and not in front of the machine, that's all. All i'm saying is that I didn't want to go home, and type in error messages, and not get replies. Basically, alot of forum's i've tried to frequent are grave yard's these days. Just making sure people, 'give a crap' first. hehe. Thanks for the help though. I'm pretty sure it's a BIOS box.

Re-install Linux - anything. Boot a Ubuntu liveCD , go here, and follow the instructions. From Ubuntu file manager you should be able to just double-click the downloaded file to unroll the tar - then run it as suggested and post the RESULTS.txt; that will allow us to make informed suggestions.

Ok, as suggested above, you can reinstall. As you've stated, you've done it already, so I am going to go on the thought either you have a true problem, or you made the exact same error in both attempts.

I am going to make the assumption you checked that the SATA controller settings in the BIOS are correct.

While you wait for anyone to comment on the file indicated by syg00, here's two more suggestions:

IIRC, Ubuntu's disk tool (it was the same as GNOME's) allows you to check SMART data and errors. Have you checked into this? Boot up from your live USB stick and run the disk utility. Unfortunately this only is good for the drive itself, a controller problem likely won't show. It's not the be-all-end-all, but if there actually is a disk error that can be detected by the hardware, maybe you'll get lucky. But two disks? I'm going for an installation error.

Before going through the hassle of going through yet another reinstall, have you tried Ubuntu's Boot Repair Utility? Here's some more information on that:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

Use your live USB, and follow the instructions for the Second Option: install. Then follow the instructions for the actual repair.

Unfortunately GRUB is getting to be a complicated beast, if Ubuntu follows the Debian way in this regard; the configuration is stored as a bunch of separate files, so hopefully we won't have to go there.

All i'm saying is that I didn't want to go home, and type in error messages, and not get replies.

Lack of information is a sure way to get that too. I'm not trying to give you a hard time, but trying to help you in the future.

I don't know where you are, but here it's night time. If you work at night, I feel for you, I do the same.

I would try to boot from Grub Rescue mode.
It might help to find where is your linux installed and what a problem do you have.
http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials...ub-2-on-linux/
Not that booting from Grub shell and Grub-Rescue shell are different things.

BTW, where did you install Grub? At /dev/sda or /dev/sda1? If the latter you need to reinstall it at /dev/sda

If you get the grub prompt, you likely have it pointing to the wrong disk/partition.

Not sure we determined why it was so cheap yet. It may be junk.

I'd consider going to bios and see what the bios does say about the drive.

Consider running hard drive diags too. Controller may be bad. Cables or psu too.

May be worth making a usb flash install and see if it works.

Post more about this machine.