PS It does boot normally to Windows with the USB drive disconnected. Presumably, therefore, the problem should be in the Grub file on hd0, n'est ce pas? I wouldn't know where to start to fix that.

PS It does boot normally to Windows with the USB drive disconnected. Presumably, therefore, the problem should be in the Grub file on hd0, n'est ce pas? I wouldn't know where to start to fix that.

PPS It does boot normally into Windows with the USB drive disconnected. Also, when I shut down and rebooted, (with the USB connected) the internal drive was selected and it booted normally. I don't know how I got 2 PSs.

Wow, 85 years old? I really admire that you are so willing to tackle learning a whole new operating system like Linux. I hope I have it together as much as you seem to when I (hopefully) make it to that age.

But back to the fun but sometimes frustrating LinuxLand, that really is strange why you would get a Grub error 5 in one case but not the other when booting the USB drive. By the way, in case you are curious, a Grub error 5 is:
I'm not particularly concerned about exactly which Grub error it is since the behavior is so inconsistent. But just to do a quick check on your sdb partition table, how about also posting:
Are there any BIOS settings related to your USB drive other than the boot order? It seems to me that the most likely cause of the inconsistent booting behavior would be due to an issue with your BIOS. How old is the computer and BIOS? You might want to check the manufacturer's website of your motherboard to see if there is a BIOS upgrade available.

In one of your early posts you show the output of the 'fdisk -l' command listing sda1 as a FAT32 partition and sda2 as an ntfs partition. In a later post of this command, you show those same partitions plus two Linux partitions, sda3 and sda4. Did you create these as boot partitions on the windows drive? Have you tried creating a separate boot partition on the windows drive as suggested by someone earlier? If you are trying to do that, here is a site which explains it in detail specifically for Ubuntu:

http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzo...boot_partition

Even if you decide not to do it, this is a great site to bookmark for info on Grub.

You have a lot of partitions. Have you got separate data partitions? /home partitions? You show sda3, sda4, sdb1, sdb6, sdb7 as Linux partitions? Are these all separate installs of Ubuntu or what? You also have sdb5, sdb7 and sdb9 as swap partitions, that's pretty much overkill. You only need one at most.

Reading through your original post, you indicated that you wanted to be able to boot your xp drive to xp without the external drive attached and you indicate you can do that. You indicate you can boot with options if you hit the "ESC" key, that's default behavior as indicated in your Ubuntu menu.lst file.

I'm not sure either where you get the error 5, if you have all these different partitions as Ubuntu installations, I can see where the system is confused.

From your posts of the (hd0) output, Grub sees (hd1) as sda and (hd0) as sdb which is opposite of what it usually is.

I'd rather be skiing. Ha.
It's not a whole new OS. I have been at it as an entrepreneur since 1981 when we were making machine parts and needed to make tapes for computer machine tools. I never tried to write any code except for some simple shell scripts. I've forgotten most everything I ever knew, but I do it as kind of a hobby.

Anyway, I was about to try the latest "test" and I rebooted. I noticed the message, as it booted linux, "Boot from (hd0,7)ext3" which doesn't agree with anything you uncovered. I wanted to be sure of what I was reading so I interrupted the boot sequence to go back (Ctl-Alt-Del) and, guess what -- no more USB drive. It is not on the menu. I can't make it come back.

Great hobby!!!

Actually, booting from (hd0,7) is exactly what we expect; you are currently booting sdb8 on your USB drive, and when you boot the USB drive, it is then (hd0) on start up. But I don't think it was a good idea to restart right in the middle of booting Ubuntu; probably you need to do an fsck on the file system now. How about doing:
And please post the output.

Thanks again - to both of you. Will tackle this again in the AM. Got a message that it recognized a new device - but it malfunctioned and it didn't seem to expect it to come back. I suspect the USB drive is kaput.
I don't know where I got all those devices. Probably screwed up the installation of linux some time back.

Sorry, but I was distracted by other problems (not computer related).
So, I get the message that the USB device is not recognized. The 'cure' is to install new driver, but it won't accept the installation and repeats the message. On the second iteration it says "Install new device." I presume, therefore, that the drive is DEAD. I also suspect that it was dieing which was what caused me (and, unfortunately, you all the problems.

I think the logical thing to do is to install linux on another partition on the internal drive. I have an Apple Time Capsule as wireless base station, network router and 1T backup so I don't really need the USB drive. I will lose the ability to have an off site backup but can't help that. Fortunately, I hadn't installed anything important on the USB drive (e.g. financial info) because I wanted to be sure it was stable.

Thank you for all your help and effort; it is greatly appreciated. Sorry it was fruitless.