Ubuntu 5.10 not able to boot!!!
 

First of all please don't tell me to change/upgrade my ubuntu version. I am not interested in changing my distro either at the moment. (I pray that I may find some solution out here).

I used to wrk with ubuntu 5.10 breezy badger. I had installed it on a separate hard disk. Earlier I used to remove the hard disk in which winxp was installed and put this hard disk to work in ubuntu! Those days it used to work fine.

Lately I have somehow managed to connect the two hard drives together. They are not connected to each other. Rather they directly connect to the mother board. They also have their own individual power supplies. (This is just to give you a picture of how I had connected my drives). And (if it helps) the winxp hd is on IDE master ch2 & ubuntu is on IDE master ch3.

If I want to load ubuntu I just restart my system, hit F12 and select to boot from the 2nd hardisk. I get the screen with the ubuntu logo with the progress bar indicator and stuff, but all of that goes away and I get back to the console screen where it finally says:

And then a prompt appears wherein I can type commands. I don't know what to do here. I guess this problem is because ubuntu is not deteceting the files it requires to complete the booting process. Any one knows what to do? I've even searched using google but I was too confused, didn't know what to do...!

After you select the Breezy drive hit the <F2> key - should give you all the messages instead of the progress meter.
If not, hit the <Esc> key (quickly, before you get the progress bar). Should give you a boot menu - select the recovery mode.

The messages should give you an idea of what is going wrong.

I believe grub is looking at the wrong hd...!

Do I have to disconnect my win hd and do something...at least that will get it to work the old fashion, but at least I am hoping that I find some way to detect which hard drive that is and specify that in the dual boot. (I have a dual boot, but ubuntu currently is not configured properly.) Someone has to tell me how I should do this too.

PS: if want to know how I created a dual boot check this: http://www.poopoccurs.com/linux/dualboot.html

Grub has done it's job - otherwise you wouldn't be seeing Ubuntu start up.
Your problem is elsewhere.

That is a very old article. Generally should work o.k., but some of it (like the 1024 cylinder issue) is no longer relevant.

Hi, now it works. This way however is not the solution I was hoping for. I was kind of expecting something to do from the busybox command shell. But right now I just changed slots on my mother board. I have only 2 slots where my serial ATA disks fit in. I just interchanged how the cables fit. Now if I want to boot linux I do the same old thing...select the proper drive.

Can I just ask you one question?
why are you running such an old ubuntu?

Thats the only version I have access to right now. :)