Now, I may be in the wrong section here (hardware) but I do believe this is a hardware issue. If indeed it is not, I welcome any admins to move this post to the correct section. That said, here's the issue:

After years of frustration and problems with Windows XP, my parents finally asked me to install a Linux distro onto their machine. Taking their needs and lack of experience outside Windows in mind, I suggested Ubuntu and Linux Mint to them (as I do to pretty much anyone who wants an easy and beginner-friendly distro). Running first Mint's live session and then Ubuntu's on my own machine to give them an idea of how their new desktop would look, they picked Ubuntu and I grabbed the disk, my external hard drive, and proceeded to back up all their pics, music, docs, etc onto the external.

Once finished, I popped Ubuntu (10.04 LTS) into their machine for a reboot. Realizing when the Windows XP logo came up that the boot order is set to boot from the hard drive first, I went into BIOS and changed the boot order to check the appropriate DVD drive first (they have two DVD drives, both can and have burned onto DVDs without issue), and then the hard drive. Saving my changes and exiting, I did another reboot.

I got as far as the splash screen where the dots under the Ubuntu logo lit up as normal, and then after a bit of a wait on my part, suddenly exits to a screen with a prompt telling me a boot device could not be found. Trying again with Linux Mint proved similar.

Next I tried simply letting it boot into Windows as normal where I could then use Wubi to install Ubuntu beside Windows but again, the screen got as far as the Windows logo with the blue "loading bar" underneath and then would simply reboot. Having to focus my attention elsewhere for a couple minutes I found out upon return that the system was stuck in an endless loop of rebooting, asking to select between a safe mode, normal boot and last known configuration for Windows, then to the logo and starting over again.

I went back into the BIOS and returned the settings to booting from the hard drive first as before (nothing else had been changed), and attempted another reboot. Same loop.

I had made a boot "stick" for Ubuntu some time ago, and I've used it once when installing Ubuntu on a friend's laptop which had a broken CD drive. After it wouldn't boot from the USB device I looked in BIOS and selected "look for other devices to boot from" as there was not option to boot from USB in the standard option list (just hard drive, DC/DVD, and disabled). Still no luck.

Calling up my self-proclaimed computer expert uncle, he assured me that returning the BIOS to its default settings would allow it to boot normally back into Windows, probably after performing a disk check.

Taking his advice I returned the BIOS to its default settings and reboot. No change, same loop! Frustrated I called him up again, and he said he'd have a look at it when he next gets a chance. heh. That may not be for a while as he is known for taking on projects he can't (or won't) finish.

Anyway, tired and now uncertain, I thought perhaps it's something to do with a live disk. I tried an openSUSE installation disk and ended up with "please insert disk 1 into drive" prompt after selecting "install" from the first menu on the disk.

Getting more frustrated at this point, I then tried my copy of Slackware knowing I could watch each message as the kernel loads, keyboard is selected, etc and get an idea where the problem is.

The kernel seemed to load okay, but I did notice messages like "ata2 not responding. Forcing hardreset."

After logging in, I proceeded into fdisk where I was able to successfully create a 2GB swap partition and a bootable 158GB partition on the hard disk. In setup, I was able to enable the swap and format both the swap and root partition (I selected ext4 for the root partition). The problem appeared when I attempted to have Slackware look for a source CD or DVD. When that failed, I went through the entire list of optical device types manually, failing with each one.

I'm not sure what I can do to fix this. I want to install Ubuntu or Mint on this system and I haven't yet tried re-installing Windows (and I'd rather not as neither my parents nor I want to have to deal with Microsoft anymore). Here are some potentially useful info on the system:

Bought it on Kijiji for $250 last year. Seller claims to have it together himself and his reason for selling was due recently buying a laptop and deciding he didn't want the tower to use as a spare. He has also offered to us his moniter, keyboard, mouse, and speakers but we were only interested in the tower so I think the others went back up on Kijiji.

Single IDE 160GB hard drive and (according to BIOS) set to Primary Master.
Two DVD/CD drives. The top one (set to Secondary Master) is an IDE DVD-RW and the second one just underneath the top one (set to Secondary Slave) is an IDE DVD-RAM. Nothing is set as Primary Slave.
Memory is 1GB DDR RAM and processor is Intel Pentium 4 2.6GHz.

Since buying it, we've had no problems with the hardware. We've played video games of various size and age, watched movies, listened to music, played DVDs, burned DVDs and CDs, attached various USB devices from externals to video game pads to printers, and we've managed to keep the tower free of dust and dirt. The only issues experienced were the common problems XP suffers from.

Anyway, I want to do everything I can before labeling the tower as a big shiny paper-weight. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers!

In summary you have not been able to get the CD drive and hard disk working the way they should and all of them are IDE devices.

It may not be a bad idea to verify the jumper settings of of the 3 IDE devices and at the same time replugging the connectors hoping to get a more positive electrical connection.

IDE devices can be set to "cable select" psoition and the master or slave status depends on which plug of the ribbon cable it is attached to. I think there is also limitation of using a 40-conductor instead of 80-conductor ribbon cable. Some hard disks, think it is WD, like to be configured as single when not connected in a master or slave arrangement. A faulty connection can lead to intermitten faults.

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Thanks saikee. I'll do that and report back perhaps tonight on my progress.

Alright well, I did as suggested and found both DVD drives had jumpers set incorrectly so checking the case of both drives (which had jumper settings for Master, Slave, Single Drive and Cable Select) I set the top as Secondary Master and the bottom as Secondary Slave as the system detects them as being.

After doing that and checking the wires and ribbon cables I tried once more to boot from the Live CD. Success!!

I was able to install Ubuntu 10.04 onto the hard drive without any error and I thought I was out of the water when the disk ejected normally and I was prompted to hit ENTER for reboot. However, upon reboot, the system seemed to be looking for something as no splash or image came up, and eventually I received this message:

Unfortunately, I have no idea what that means. Is something wrong with the hard drive? I do have like 3 spare hard drives lying around so if I need to replace this one I can, but I'd like to know if there's anything else I can try first before I do that as I'd be dropping from a 160GB hard drive to an older, but reliable 82GB hard disk.

Suggestions, questions, comments, critiques, etc welcome!

That indicates it is looking for a partition with the above uuid and it no longer exists. Open a terminal and use the command: blkid and see what uuids you have and find the one for whichever partition has the / of Ubuntu/Linux Mint. Check your /etc/fstab file to see which uuid is there, the one above? is it the same as the one your get for your root partition? This could be the problem but it might be something else but this is easy to check to start.

OK it looks like the installer might have got it wrong somewhere. I am quite relax about the bugs in the installer if I can fire the Ubuntu up.

If you can see a booting screen at the beginning press the "c" key immediately to drop into a Grub prompt.

This command list all the hard disk and partitions of your system
you can use the "ls" command to find out where is your Ubuntu. The partition that boots must have /boot/grub directory so you can try
If you know where Ubuntu has been installed, say it is 3rd partition of of the 2nd disk then it will be known to Grub2 (hd1,3) and in Linux /dev/sdb3 as Grub2 count disk from 0 and partition from 1, you can fire up Ubuntu manually by these commands in a Grub prompt
Adjust the red bits to suit your circumstance. If you manage to boot up Ubuntu you can use manual commands of "linux" and "initrd" in place those in /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

For your comfort one of my PC uses Ubuntu 9.04 and it also failed to boot with the UUID reference installed by the installer. I booted it up by the above method. I later check the UUID reference and couldn't find any mistake so may be there is a bug there.

Alright, tying in blkid from the live disk gets this:
Next you asked me to check /etc/fstab:
Next, I will try your recent suggestion saikee. Thank-you both!

jalupp,

I am fairly certain that in a Grub2 prompt your Ubuntu 10.04 will boot manually with this instructions
Ubuntu, like many distros, places the kernel "vmlinuz" and ramdisk file "initrd.img" in the / directory which are symbolic-linked to their latest equivalents in /boot directory.

Your fstab confirms the root partition / is /dev/sda1

Perhaps I'm typing "c" at the wrong time but I've tried hitting the key at various points (and a number of times over the last day) without any prompt coming up.

What happens is, when the system first boots up and I am presented with a brief set of options to go into BIOS setup (F2), or select boot device (F11), I hit F11 so that I can select "Boot from CD/DVD." Immediately upon selecting it there is a brief line of text that flashes at the bottom of the screen followed by "boot:" underneath (at which point typing "c" would cause the screen to display "could not load c kernel") and then it goes right into a "loading" screen where typing "c" causes a "c" to overlap the text at the top of the screen until it is finished. Then the Ubuntu logo with the dots underneath come up and typing "c" at that point seems to do nothing. Then it goes right into the Live environment where after a few seconds a "crash detected" icon appears in the notification area. Now I don't remember what the alert is, but I did write it down and can give that once at home (I'm at work right now).

From the Live disk however I did do a bit of snooping around inside the hard disk and at one point decided to look into the disk utility where I found there were bad sectors found on the disk and apparently it's over 5 years old (we just got the system last year and the seller claimed it to be about a year old THEN). I'm considering testing one of my smaller, but in good condition hard disks just to see if I simply need to replace the hard disk (a 250GB IDE HDD is pretty affordable).

So, what do you think? Worse comes to worse I CAN just go out and get a new computer, but even then I'll be sitting around scratching my head while pondering ways to fix this one, lol. Last year I almost got into a fight with a friend who had recommended I toss an old system I'd had for over 10 years because the whole thing was worn beyond repair and the cost of replacing everything needing replacement proved more expensive than buying another machine would have been. To this day it's still sitting in my garage until I gather up the courage to do the deed. Perhaps some day I'll get some new (old) parts and then install a Linux distro from the mid-90s onto it just for kicks!

Sorry if I gave the impression that you can get a Grub2 prompt from the Live CD but you can't as it is booted by isolinux specially made for booting a CD or DVD.

You get your Grub2 prompt from the installed Linux when the boot menu first appears. Let's say you have not got one as depending on how you install it may go directly into Ubuntu. Here is how to get a Grub prompt.

Your Ubuntu is in sda1, right? so if you boot up a Live CD you can mount this partition and alter the Grub2 configuration file /boot/grub/grub.cfg. The steps are

(1) Boot up Ubuntu CD and use it as a Live CD.

(2) Go to "Application", click "accessories" and select "Terminal"

(3) Become a Super user in Ubuntu by type this command in terminal
Ubuntu will not ask for the root password if you run it as a Live CD.

(4) Make a mounting point in /mnt, mount sda1 and check the partition has been mounted
Now you sda1 partition is mounted in /mnt/sda1.

(5) Amend your Ubuntu Grub2 configuration file by command
and add a # in front of the "timeout" statement
This stops Grub from booting any system and wait for you instruction at the terminal. The # causes Grub not to action that line.

(6) Reboot the PC, with Ubuntu CD removed, and you should see a Grub booting screen. You can boot the system manually by first pressing the "c" key now.

The idea is you know how to boot up your Ubuntu manually and then able to revise the /boot/grub/grub.cfg. If you need help post your /boot/grub/grub.cfg here.

Okay. I did as suggested and upon attempting a reboot, same as before. The system goes straight from the BIOS screen to a flashing cursor at the top left-hand side of the screen, during which typing "c" simply causes a "c" to appear as if I were in a text-editing mode. Then after a moment I receive the BusyBox message as before.

Now, I did notice something very interesting, which could be the key to the problem here. First, running through the live disk, the live OS recognises my hard disk as media (going into computer, then selecting the 250GB filesystem (mistakenly mentioned as 150GB before, apologies there) tells me the hard disk itself is being stored in the media folder of the live disk). This explains why I can't seem to boot into Grub! There is no Grub boot with a live disk and there is no Grub on the hard disk because if the live OS is recognising it as a media drive within the live OS's own filesystem nothing would be saved when the system reboots!

Perhaps that also explains why I receive this a moment after the Gnome desktop appears:
I'm still thinking tomorrow after work I should try out another hard drive just to see if anything changes.