I've had some boot problems lately, with various levels of failure - boot errors, GRUB loads then locks up with initrmfs / BusyBox message errors, X-Server loading lock-ups, etc.

It's an HP dv 9000. Never on the couch (which causes overheating VERY easily, to a design already susceptible), and little used even, in 5 years.

I took it apart anyway, to clean the intake for the CPU fan. It was clean.

New hard drive, same problem.

Live CD seems to load properly every time. When LiveCD is loaded, occasionally I cannot mount SOME partitions on the (2) hard drives.

This screenshot I saw only one time. I think it is related to the problem.

Attached Thumbnails

 

That really sounds like a bad harddisk if it runs fine from a cd
look at the output of :


or you could use of course replace sda with your real hd

Just offering my best guess - could it be a hard drive cable problem?

It's a laptop. There is no cable. So if the problem isn't the harddisk, it could be a bad controller. Can you test the hard disk on another computer? If it is a SATA disk, you can attach it directly on a PC.
Another thought, if the disk is OK, could it be the BIOS? Can you do a BIOS update?

My bad - been a while since I opened up a laptop; thought they might use cables these days. However, if both the old hard drive and the new hard drive are exhibiting the same problem, and it's not heat, I'd consider the hard drive's connection to the system

BIOS HAS been updated from within Windows Vista environment.

Problem has manifested on multiple drives in BAY 1, including 2 different NEW drives, again, in BAY 1 of 2-BAY laptop.

I think it MIGHT be the controller for HDD BAY 1...

However, Windows 7 has not failed when booted from BAY 1 drive.

Do I need to do selective scans??? What will be the syntax?


Smart monitor scan: ??? highlights

chuck-04d0@chuck-04d0-laptop:~$ sudo smartctl --all /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.38 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model: WDC WD3200BEVT-00A0RT0
Serial Number: WD-WXN1AB078107
Firmware Version: 01.01A01
User Capacity: 320,072,933,376 bytes
Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is: 8
ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is: Thu Jul 19 12:24:40 2012 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

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

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x00) Offline data collection activity
was never started.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: (10800) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 127) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 5) minutes.
SCT capabilities: (0x7037) SCT Status supported.
SCT Feature Control supported.
SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 187 181 021 Pre-fail Always - 1625
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 128
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 96
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 051 Old_age Always - 0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 121
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 67
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 567
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 115 093 000 Old_age Always - 32
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 100 253 051 Old_age Offline - 0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
No self-tests have been logged. [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]


SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
1 0 0 Not_testing
2 0 0 Not_testing
3 0 0 Not_testing
4 0 0 Not_testing
5 0 0 Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

chuck-04d0@chuck-04d0-laptop:~$