I have a HP s5-1414PC with dual boot that boots up Windows 8 if I don't make a selection. When the system was first set up, I noticed that there were three icons on the start up screen. One Windows and one Ubuntu and one Linux. If you selected Ubuntu or Linux then Ubuntu would start up. Every time I update my Ubuntu it adds another Linux icon to the start up screen. I now have seven Linux icons on my start up screen. How do I get rid of all these extra icons that are now obsolete and won't start Ubuntu? Not even the Ubuntu icon will start Ubuntu, what is going on with these updates? I'm using Ubuntu 12.04.

I don't know enough about command line language to understand all the descriptions about Grub and Grub2, it is all foreign to me. I just thought there should be some way to get rid of all the extra Icons that are created every time I update Ubuntu. If it keeps adding Linux icons to the screen I'm going to run out of display room on the screen.

When you say 'icons', are you referring to the menuentries you see on boot where you can select an operating system to boot?
If you have seven entries for Ubuntu, you must have had a number of kernel updates. If you want to just remove the entries from the boot menu, you can just delete them from the grub.cfg menu but you will need to make sure you are deleting the correct one or your machine will be unbootable. I'm not sure why some of the entries wouldn't boot any longer as that is not standard behavior AFAIK.

So is it the boot menu you are referring to?

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Yes Yancek, that is what I was talking about. Every time I update it adds a new Linux Icon to the start up page. I'm scared to delete from the menu because I'm not sure which one to delete. The way I have been getting Ubuntu to start, is to keep picking one at a time to see which one works. They don't seem to be in any order that makes sense to me. I generally pick the one with the highest number, but that doesn't always work either. I was hoping for a way to click on an Icon I know didn't work and delete the Icon from the start-up page using graphics rather than command line. I guess that probably asking to much. However I do want to thank you for your solution and I am going to have to find someone that knows how to get around in command line to show me what to do.

Yours truly Jimez1000 ..... :O)