[SOLVED] grub prompt at boot - commands don't work
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I got a new laptop today, with Windows 7 pre-installed. I've been working for most of the day to dual boot it with Ubuntu, and had a bit of trouble installing GRUB. Eventually, I *think* I got it to install on the partition Ubuntu is on - at least that is what I wanted. But now when when I boot up the computer, it gives me a Grub prompt (after a short intro saying something about how the tab can complete your commands), and I'm at a loss for what to do with it.
To make matters worse, none of the normal grub commands seem to work; it cannot find root or kernel commands, help returns a list of things, help root doesn't return anything, help kernel likewise, and only 'exit' actually seems to work, which just restarts the boot..going back to grub again.
Have I not installed grub correctly? Should I go back to Ubuntu livecd desktop and try something else? Or is it a problem with my recently made partitions?
Thanks for any advice you can offer!
Distribution: OpenSUSE 13.2 64bit-Gnome on ASUS U52F
Posts: 1,444
Rep:
Put the CD back in the computer and boot from it, make sure internet connection is working, open up a terminal and type the following commands (This fix is not going to work if you installed Ubuntu using the WUBI installer pre pack in the disk)
/usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: cannot stat `dev/sda'.
When making the partitions, every guide I found said to make multiple partitions for ubuntu - for /boot, root, and home. I chose the one I'm pretty sure was for boot for mounting. Was that not the right choice?
Thanks for the help
I got a new laptop today, with Windows 7 pre-installed. I've been working for most of the day to dual boot it with Ubuntu, and had a bit of trouble installing GRUB. Eventually, I *think* I got it to install on the partition Ubuntu is on - at least that is what I wanted. But now when when I boot up the computer, it gives me a Grub prompt (after a short intro saying something about how the tab can complete your commands), and I'm at a loss for what to do with it.
To make matters worse, none of the normal grub commands seem to work; it cannot find root or kernel commands, help returns a list of things, help root doesn't return anything, help kernel likewise, and only 'exit' actually seems to work, which just restarts the boot..going back to grub again.
Have I not installed grub correctly? Should I go back to Ubuntu livecd desktop and try something else? Or is it a problem with my recently made partitions?
Thanks for any advice you can offer!
can you attach a snapshot of the place where your grub gets stucked?
are you able to go to single user mode?
can you post your grub.conf file?
and as the last command you tried as per me it should be
@Larry Webb I followed the guide you pointed to on reinstalling Grub2, and it seemed to work. I rebooted, and got the grub prompt again (this is normal? it seems weird, but maybe it's just until things are configured correctly?) Now it seems that root is semi-working; when i type
grub> root (hd0,
and then press tab instead of enter, i get a list of partitions to choose from (which was definitely NOT happening before re-installation). But whichever number I choose, after pressing enter grub returns:
error: unknown command 'root'.
So I'm at a loss with what to do now Thanks for all the responses.
Download and run Boot Info Script program using your ubuntu disk as a live cd and post the results. This will give us all the information we should need and not be guessing.
Thanks Larry, I did that and grub loaded when I rebooted without the livecd, and did the same thing I was describing earlier when I entered root(hd0,x). Am I even supposed to be seeing grub show up when I reboot like this?
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