Dual Boot Error Goes To Grub Rescue
 

I have a netbook with Windows 7 preinstalled. I installed Ubuntu 13.10 to an external hard drive specifying dual boot setup. At times, when booting up my netbook with the external Ubuntu hard drive attached, it boots correctly and goes right to the dual boot menu option screen. At other times, the netbook boot appears to go too fast and the external drive is not recognized (the light on the drive never comes on indicating it has not been found) and I get a "error: no such device: f17ada 10-12a2-4768-9f75-18bdidaccbba entering rescue mode ... grub rescue>.
Since I know of no way out of the "grub rescue" prompt, if I power off the netbook, remove the external hard drive, plug it into another USB port and reboot several times, it will eventually find the external drive and bring up the dual boot menu to start either Windows 7 or Ubuntu. In each case, if the hard drive lights up during the initial boot sequence, the dual boot menu screen will appear and I can boot from that point into either Windows (ugh) or Ubuntu (yeah!) as it is set up to do. If the hard drive doesn't light up during the initial boot sequence, I get the Grub Rescue error prompt.
Is there a way, when the initial boot sequence on my netbook starts, to pause it, until the external hard drive is found, and then continue the boot sequence? Or, is there a way to force the initial boot sequence to always find the external drive first so that it will always smoothly transition to the boot option to start either Ubuntu or Windows 7?
Or, is there another option of which I am unaware of?
Thanks in advance.

What happens when you boot without the USB plugged in ?. This may determine how you solve this issue.

To avoid that you can reduce the windows volume, making room for another OS in the actual computer's hard drive. Do the installation there and you won't have that problem anymore. I am sure your hard drive can handled two OSs.
Long gone are the days when computers only had 10GB hard drives.

Anyway good luck to you.


By the way I think your computer is not mounting the external hard drive on the exact same mount point every time. That causes the bootloader do what is doing

No, grub uses (in this case) UUID - mounts aren't done till the kernel is active.

Dual boot issues
 

Thanks, everyone, for your suggestions!
I did try to install Ubunto OS onto my Windows 7 hard drive, but wasn't sure about adding another partition without losing the data I had, so opted for installing on the external HD.
Trying to talk the wife into scrapping Windows on her laptop, formatting the HD and doing a full install on her machine.
I really like Ubuntu, having played with it now for about a week. It is possible that I may be at fault for my "grub rescue" error for not always plugging the external drive into the same USB port each time -- I'll be more careful about that and see if that resolves the problem.
Thanks again, your time and expertise has been very much appreciated!

[QUOTE=TroN-0074;5095790]To avoid that you can reduce the windows volume, making room for another OS in the actual computer's hard drive. Do the installation there and you won't have that problem anymore. I am sure your hard drive can handled two OSs.
Long gone are the days when computers only had 10GB hard drives.

Anyway good luck to you.


Yes, TroN-0074, you're right about the 10GB hard drive! I remember when the first 1GB HD came out -- paid US$800 for it and wondered how anyone could ever have enough data to fill it! Of course that was in the days of Windows 3.1, and Microsoft managed to bloat everything until, yep, 200GB's fill pretty fast now!

syg00, nothing happens, I get the same grub error. Can't get any boot at all until the USB HD is plugged in and gets read. I'm thinking that it may be I'm not careful enough to plug into the same USB port each time, so will check that out.
Thanks for your help.

Ok - go have a read of this. It may be that you need to increase GRUB_TIMEOUT - this can be updated once you get Ubuntu booted.

Of greater concern is the fact that you occasionally don't see the hard disk light - this is a hardware issue not grub. Grub can't deal with a device that hasn't been recognised by the hardware - it effectively doesn't exist. Maybe try getting a boot device list from the BIOS - may interrupt things long enough to get the USB recognised.

Dont need to remove windows completely. Just boot the live Ubuntu install, either CD, DVD, or Flasdrive whichever install media you have.

From the Live session run GParted (An application included in the Ubuntu install ISO) that will display your hard drive content and format.

What you do from there is select your hard drive from within Gparted and select resize partition option, just move the windows partition to the left to make room for Ubuntu, like 40 or 60 GB of unallocated space for another OS, or more if you have the space.

Here is the link with the how to http://howtoubuntu.org/how-to-resize...parted-live-cd

You dont even have to format that partition because the Ubuntu installer will do that for you. I think however you should take note on the label of the unallocated space so you can tell the installer to install ubuntu in that specifict chunk of your hard drive. it will be something like sda1 or sda2, etc.

Here is the link https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot

During installation you will select the option of manual partitioning. then you will select the unallocated space in the hard drive Note you will have to know the label of the unallocated space you previously created it will be something like sda1 or sda2, etc. once you have selected.

You can created more little partition with the installer like one partition of about 15BG for /, one partition of about 30 GB for /home, and one partition of about 3BG for swap. The installer will allow you to do that during installation

Once you have that done you can proceed with the installation.

Good luck to you.

Dual Boot Error Goes to Grub Rescue
 

Thanks so much for working all this through -- will try your suggestions this week.
Really appreciate your time!

Great idea! I'll bet increasing the timeout will do the trick. Now that I'm keeping the external HD plugged into the same USB port I'm having more success booting, but it really does seem that the sequence is going so fast that external HD isn't getting recognized consistently. Usually it is found the second time I reboot now.
Thank-you!