GRUB not booting past stage 2

mfrick · 05-28-2007, 03:45 AM

Hi people,

Hopefully someone will be able to help me out with this.
I have a linux server that currently is not booting at all the screen display gets as far as saying grub stage 2 and then after a while it just goes to the grub commandline. Additionally if I try to go the bios setup menu it (hitting del on boot) just hangs when trying to enter the menu. Any suggestions as to what might cause this would be greatly appreciated?

Thanks for your time

bigrigdriver · 05-28-2007, 04:28 AM

Grub gets to stage 2 and fails (at that point, it has gone beyond POSTand BIOS test routines and needs RAM for the initrd). Trying to enter the BIOS setup fails (it also needs RAM for the screen display).

So, I'd guess that a RAM chip has failed.

Try a Linux installation cd. Look for memtest86 in the start/installation menu. Memtest86 should be run before the OS has booted for complete testing of RAM. If you have a failed RAM chip, memtest86 will tell you so.