I have installed Ubuntu 9.10 and it works very well. My only problem is booting up. When I turn on the computer the system stops at:
'BOOT FROM CD.'

To get round this I have to hold down key 'F12' during the boot process then in the blue menu choose 'HD' then the hard disk which contains Ubuntu.

I can't work out how to get Ubuntu to boot automatically as it did before.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Do you still have a CD inside your drive? Normally if you don't, the next available boot device should start up, namely your hard drive.

As a workaround, you can edit your BIOS settings to always boot from your hard drive first. But then you'll have to change back if you're installing a new system from CD/DVD.

-A

Thanks Ahmed No I don't have a CD in the drive. I've always had the system configured so that it boots from the hard drive first and if a CD is in the drive it boots from that. That's normal isn't it? I can't work out what has changed. BTW Why would I have to change the bios?

The point is, the BIOS controls the boot sequence, i.e. which drive gets checked for a bootable system first. What you had before is this: CD first, then hard drive. Every time you booted up, your PC checked the CD drive, found nothing, then went on to the hard drive automatically.

I can't imagine why installing Ubuntu would change that, but to be sure: When you boot up, it usually says "Press (Esc/F2/F8/whatever) to enter setup". Do that to access your BIOS settings (usually blue page with lots of menus). Navigate to the boot settings menu and check if the boot sequence is alright, then save and exit. As suggested, one workaround would be to place the HD on the first place, but then you can't boot from CD until you change that back.

This might be a shot in the blue, but did you install grub to the Master Boot Record or to a local partition on your hard drive?

-A