Hello all

I have a desktop pc with Vista. On an external 800 GB usb harddisk are 6 partitions. The first is an NTFS partition to pass files between Vista and other OS's. The rest are ext3 partitions. Ubuntu 8.10 is on one of them.

Now I try to install Mandriva, Fedora... When I try to boot anuthing other than Ubuntu I get grub error 5. Strange, I can mount the other partitions, read and write files from and to them...

I use easybcd to boot from the external HD.

Any ideas?

Koen Plessers

Probably be a good idean to give more detail on your setup, number of drives, how you boot (chanaging boot priority in BIOS??), post 'fdisk -l' output from Ubuntu to show your partition information. Not a good sign but...

I've never used EasyBCD but if you are using it to boot your external you might check whatever documentation is available for it.

Hello

This is the output op fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/sda: 128.8 GB, 128849018880 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 15665 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000a676d

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 15288 122800828+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 15289 15665 3028252+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 15289 15665 3028221 82 Linux swap /
Solaris

Disk /dev/sdf: 750.1 GB, 750156374016 bytes 255 heads, 63
sectors/track, 91201 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 =
8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x12e232d5 Device Boot
Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdf1 *
1 6384 51279448+ 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sdf2
6385 91201 681292552+ 5 Extended /dev/sdf5
6385 6385 8001 82 Linux swap / Solaris

/dev/sdf6 6386 21822 123997671 83 Linux
/dev/sdf7 21823 37224 123716533+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdf8 37225 52553 123130161 83 Linux
/dev/sdf9 52554 71877 155219998+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdf10 71878 91201 155219998+ 83 Linux

Strange, it finds Linux on sda, because there is only Vista on it. Ubuntu is on sdf6, and works fine. Fedora is on sdf7, which is not recognized by GRUB.

Boot sequence in BIOS is first DVD, then the internal HD, then the external.

Thanks already

Koen

Not sure what happened here but your fdisk output shows only one partition with windows (ntfs) and that is sdf1 marked as active. Did you overwrite the vista with one of your subsequent Linux installs? Are you able to boot vista?