I'm trying to troubleshoot my father's Dual boot system with him in Montana and me in Wisconsin, but from the sounds of it, he is no longer getting the GRUB menu up at all.

His setup is a Ubuntu 8.10 / Win XP dualboot. He does have access to a Ubuntu 8.10 disk, how can we rebuild the GRUB setup without replacing the who install?

This should help you: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubunt...-wipes-it-out/

If he can boot the disk, he should be able to use the grub-install script to do it for him

Have a look at man grub-install on your system to see how it works.

If you want more detailed responses, you really need to gvie more details on disk structure (fdisk -l), what's installed where, etc.

Good luck

Billy,

That's part of my problem is he can't boot the HD at all. The way he describes it the Bios is looping, Which makes me suspect it's not GRUB since you would normally get the "No bootable media" message, or some such. However I'm hesitent to have him take it to any local computer shops since I know they're just going to wipe the drive saying linux is the problem (they have twice already) and walking him through a remote install from 1000+ miles away is rather time consuming.

If he has a way of burning a disk have him or you can make a Super Grub disk and send it to him.

http://www.supergrubdisk.org/index.php?pid=5

Make sure cd is set to boot first in bios.

No, I meant the Ubuntu disk, by which I assumed you meant a DVD/CD. Boot this into rescue mode. From there use grub-install.

Or wasn't that what you meant?

He does not have a ubuntu disk accroding to OP. I agree though the only way around this is sometype of linux disk or grub.

The reason I suggested grub is because of his fathers expertise level.

actually he does have a Ubuntu 8.10 CD, so we'll give that a go, it's still early Mountain time, but I'll give him a jingle later, thanks for all the help

BTW does the grub-install auto detect which partition has which OS or do we need to do the fdisk -l

I'd definitely recommend using fdisk -l so your sure about the partitions, especially considering you're 1,000 miles apart. Have him load the Ubuntu CD in the drive and go to a terminal. Enter the commands below after making necessary changes. Don't know which partitions are which and the below entries assume one drive and Ubuntu on sda2 so, make necessary changes. If you could get the output from him and post it, would be easier??


sudo grub
root (hd0,1)
setup (hd0)
quit

Doesn't ubuntu have a "Desktop sharing" application?

kubuntu certainly does (K->Internet->(krfb) Desktop sharing. )

If he can open ports 5900-5909 in his firewall and forward them to his PC's LAN IP (or if he has no firewall).
If his firewall is in his modem/router, he can do this from windows or ubuntu.

Suggestion:
- Have him boot to his ubuntu 8.10 live CD
If he is connected to his router by ethernet cable, ubuntu will automatically get him an internet connection. Wireless may cause problems.
- Have him go to http://whatismyip.com and make a note of his WAN IP number
- Have him allow desktop sharing in his GUI
- Have him tell you his IP number and desktop sharing password (krfb generates this for you, gnome must have something similar)

at your end, in a terminal
You'll be asked for the password.
He'll be asked if he wants to allow a remote connection (that's you, so he had better say YES).

His desktop opens in a new window on yours.
When you bring that window into focus, your keyboard's keypresses will be sent to his desktop, and your mouse will work like his.

Then you can poke around as much as you like to help solve his problem.
I do this all the time for family members running linux at remote locations. Petrol ("gas") is very expensive in my part of the world.

Yea I usually remote in with him, but since he has 4 machines (his wife has laptop and Desktop, he has laptop and Desktop) I use Hamachi along with VNC to remote control. I may just get onto one of the other machines on his network and then bounce in to the local machine with the CD in, hadn't thought of that way.

He's not at home yet so I haven't had a chance to try any of the suggestions put forth, I'll certainly update the thread when I do though.

From original

Then that's the way to do it.
I think you already know how to sort this out.
So, please, just do it.

And let us know how you get on, because you asked for advice here.