Grub sometimes doesn't load
 

Most of the time when I turn on my laptop (Compaq Presario 2105us with Ubuntu Jaunty on it) Grub will not start and my computer then goes into a PXE. It appears to be attepting to boot from a LAN. In the BIOS the LAN is the last option in the boot sequence so I am not sure why this is happening.

Eventually I can get the computer to come on by just turning it on and off until it boots correctly (usually about 5-10 attempts) I don't think this is good for the components though and would like to find a solution to the problems.

I tried to re-setup Grub from the live CD, but that didn't seem to help, in fact I believe it made it worse as I used to be able to get the computer to come on after 3-5 attempts but now it is 8-10 attempts.

Does anybody have any ideas?

So is the BIOS set up to boot from the Hard Drive first?

Have you seen this page. Somehow I belive it will be useful for ya.

The BIOS settings are to first boot from Removable Devices, then from CD ROM, then from Hard Drive, then from LAN

Sometimes Grub boots when going through this sequence and sometimes it doesn't.

It could be either your drive taking a long time to spin up, or your drive controller taking a long time to initialise. Instead of power-cycling, try the three-finger-salute (ctrl+alt+del)

Is there a way to remedy this? I have read that this could be an indication of the hard drive starting to fail, but I don't believe this is the case because the computer only started doing this when I installed Ubuntu. So how can I get the drive to spin up faster or getting the drive controller to take less time?

IMHO it could be coincidental that your problems started when you installed Ubuntu. The BIOS is still in control of the boot process and for the reasons already stated moves to the next device. If it was a MBR or bootloader problem I would of expected some type of boot error message. Running smartctl or the drives manufactures diagnostics tools will help determine if you have a HDD that is about to die.

Why don't you change Hard Drive to be the first option.

Also, how old is your computer, how did you install Ubuntu, how many partitions you have there, have you tried to run any other distro, did you use fsck, have you tried to reinstall Ubuntu, was the md5sum OK?

Better still change it to be the only option and then see what happens.

steven@steven-laptop:~$ sudo smartctl -H /dev/sda
[sudo] password for steven:
smartctl version 5.38 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

steven@steven-laptop:~$

Dear sasciame

You need to look at all the parameters.

(as root)
This will output a table with several columns.

Look for the text 'In_the_past', or other wording in the column WHEN FAILED

I guess I could make it my first option. Sometimes I like to mess around with a live CD of Damn Small or Puppy so I have my CD ROM ahead in the boot order.

My computer is from 2003, I have 1 partition, I haven't installed to HD any other distro, but I have played around with live CD's.

I will run fsck from Knoppix since I get a message that tells me that I could damage my system by fsck on a mounted filesystem

I did not reinstall Ubuntu. I was hoping to find a solution without having to do that. (Plus isn't that the easy way out :-) )

The md5sum was fine and I checked for disk errors when I installed from the CD.

You could also try to enter the BIOS boot menu at start, then chose your harddisk manually. Maybe this gives the controller the (eventually) extra time to get up :twocents:

fsck said /dev/sda1 was clean

How do you do this? In my BIOS it appears that the only option is to choose the order. I don't see where you can totally eliminate other options.

How to do this depends on the make and model of your `BIOS', but in general, either you select space while the device list is shown to disable the device, or +/- or PgUP/PgDn, etc. . . As I said it really depends on your make and model of `BIOS'