I started out today thinking I wanted to mess around with Linux and get beryl, which I saw on youtube and was thoroughly amazed. I decided to download and load ubuntu onto a disk and put it on my slave hard drive.
Here's my config...

Master 40g hard drive with windows and everything else on it
Slave 100g hard drive with Ubuntu on it

I'm not sure at all with what I am doing with this so bear with me please..

In the linux set up it asked me if I wanted to bring over my XP account (or something along those lines...) and I thought "Yeah, sure!". So I continued and moved on to where I wanted Linux.. Selected my slave hard drive.

After it was done loading, it told me to restart and take out the CD
I did so
When starting my computer an lovely little message saying
"Loading please wait
GRUB 1.5
ERROR 21"

I tried taking off the slave hard drive, same message, and I tried only using my slave hard drive, same message.

I'm fairly computer savvy when it comes to networking and hardware, but not with new operating systems...
Please help

Thank you,
Sean C.

21 : Selected disk does not exist. This error is returned if the device part of a device- or full file name refers to a disk or BIOS device that is not present or not recognized by the BIOS in the system.
post your /etc/fstab and your /boot/grub/menu.lst

I read that on the forums earlier, but I don't know what to do about it. I read that going into the CMOS and changing something would help, but I have no clue how to do that.

boot up a LiveCD and post your menu.lst and /etc/fstab

Sorry about this but, when I said I was new to Linux I mean I just looked at it today...
What do you mean by live cd
and the rest?

That is a very unfortunate error

http://www.uruk.org/orig-grub/errors.html
21 : "Unknown boot failure"

Since the install went without a hitch, I guess you can run a live CD OK. Since you are here, I take it the box will boot windows OK.

When you get this sort of result, you have to go data hunting...

What kind of hardware... mobo, cpu, memory, drives, etc. is this installed to? If it is a brand-name computer, tell us which one. Preferably provide a link to the specs.

How did you configure the BIOS (what sort of BIOS? Did you update the BIOS?)

Where did you install GRUB? (Master MBR? Slave MBR? Elsewhere?)

From the root terminal in the live desktop, copy over the results of:

lspci
fdisk -l

(If you have net access from the live mode, then fine. If not you can pipe the output to a file (lspci > lspci.txt) and copy the file to a windows partition... )

Check ls /media and ls /mnt to see if the linux partitions have been mounted. If not, see if you can mount them:

mkdir /mnt/sdb1
mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1

(repeat for each ext3 partition revealed by fdisk -l)

Once mounted, you can check

less /mnt/sdb1/boot/grub/menu.lst (assuming that /dev/sdb1 is the root partition and you followed the defaults.

That should hold you for now.

I would imagine that you installed ubuntu with a livecd
A livecd is a linux distro that runs comeletly off the cd

Hmmm... reading through the other posts... I see a small tutorial is needed.

The Ubuntu 7.04 Desktop CD is also called a "live" CD.
When you use Ubuntu by booting from the CD, that is "live mode". You are running entirely from the CD drive and not from disk.

The bars across the top and bottom of the desktop are called "panel"s. At the top left, there menus. If you go to applications > accessories you will see an item called "root terminal" or "sudo terminal". Click that. This is where commands are entered.

Another tutorial follows.

... hey Ace, that won't work! You'll only really get to see the version being used by the live desktop. Wouldn't the version installed give you more information?

Slow down, your confusing the noob.

I meant going on to the harddisk in something like KNOPPIX and going to the files on the harddisk

I can run ubuntu off of the disk fine, but I cannot start up windows.

1g RAM, maxtor 100g hard drive (where I installed Ubuntu), 40g hard drive, Dell 400sc, ATI Radeon graphics card, http://support.dell.com/support/topi...pport_central? this is the link to my PC

I'm not sure how to configure the bios (Could you explain how to configure it?)

Next quickie tutorial:

The terminal in linux is a powerful type of DOS console from XP and roughly like the Power Console in Vista. Instructions normally use this because it is very direct and clear. Each command is entered into the terminal.

filesystem: everything is a file
files have names that can be pretty much anything.
directories = folders have names ending in a / (but the last / is often left off)
The very start of the file system is called "the root directory" and it has no name, just a slash. The partition that contains the root directory is called the root partition.

Ubuntu has been installed to your slave drive - is this a PATA or SATA drive?

Linux doesn't distinguish specific drives the way windows does... the "raw" drive is represented by a special kind of file in the dev/ subdirectory off /

The primary master is usually /dev/sda with partitions numbered from 1. The primary slave is usually /dev/sdb ... you will have created two partitions in the default Ubuntu install, root and swap. (The swap partition is (part of the) reason why we don't need to defrag linux).

To access the filesystem on a partition we have to tell the OS about it... this process is called "mounting".

The instructions should make more sense now.

To help, I really need that information.

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82875P/E7210 Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82875P Processor to AGP Controller (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev c2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801EB (ICH5) SATA Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200 PRO] (rev 01)
02:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200 PRO] (Secondary) (rev 01)
02:0c.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 02)






and when I do the fdisk -l it says nothing.. sorry if this is a double post, I had to catch up with some comments.

Thank you all for your help!


And the drive is SATA*

I know that's what you meant... but the OP doesn't. Newbies will follow your exact instructions because that is how you use windows and because you are the expert.

seanjc
Now... XP doesn't boot either: is this because you don't know how or does it produce the same error?

Is there net access from the live mode desktop? (i.e. where are you posting from)?

Do you understand about using the root terminal?

I'm using the live CD to post on here right now.
The problem with getting to windows is I didn't (and still don't) know how to set up the bios for duel boot. I'm hoping it will run if I can get it configured but I'm not sure... When I start up my computer the message is the same, even if I take my slave hard drive out and just have the drive with windows on it in.
I'm sorry if that doesn't make sense...

and yes, thanks for the tutorial on the root terminal.


** I just looked around a bit and found the partition editor, it says the div/sda 1 37.24g and it's almost full while the media/disk/ is at 90.48g ... so I'm guessing I made a fairly large mistake?