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h.nijjar 03-25-2011 09:57 PM
error: Unknown filesystem Grub Rescue
 
This is my first thread so im apologizing in advance if im lacking detail or any info

I put together my computer yesterday and i installed Unbuntu 10.10 today and I was trying to figure out ways to dual boot it with windows xp so i wiped my hard drive through terminal following steps off the internet and then i shutdown my device and now im getting this error everytime i start up my computer and i inserted the disk i originally used to install unbuntu and went into bios and selected the cd/dvd drive to start first and im still getting the same error

tommcd 03-25-2011 10:17 PM
How exactly did you blank the hard drive?
Are you sure you are booting from the CD, and not the hard drive? That error means that grub can not find the root partition. This would happen if you are trying to boot from the hard drive and not the CD.

If you want to dual boot with XP, first install XP to the first primary partition. Use whatever hard drive space you want for XP. Leave the rest of the hard drive unallocated.
Then boot up the Ubuntu install CD and install Ubuntu to the rest of the hard drive. Grub will be installed to the master boot record of the drive and will control booting both operating systems.
What version of Ubuntu are you trying to install? You should be using either 10.04 or 10.10.

And welcome to the LQ forums!

h.nijjar 03-25-2011 10:32 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by tommcd (Post 4303734)
How exactly did you blank the hard drive?
Are you sure you are booting from the CD, and not the hard drive? That error means that grub can not find the root partition. This would happen if you are trying to boot from the hard drive and not the CD.

If you want to dual boot with XP, first install XP to the first primary partition. Use whatever hard drive space you want for XP. Leave the rest of the hard drive unallocated.
Then boot up the Ubuntu install CD and install Ubuntu to the rest of the hard drive. Grub will be installed to the master boot record of the drive and will control booting both operating systems.
What version of Ubuntu are you trying to install? You should be using either 10.04 or 10.10.

And welcome to the LQ forums!
I used this:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4929061_form...ve-ubuntu.html

and i tried to install windows xp by inserting the disc and the same thing is happening it is not letting me get past that error im unable to do anything

---------- Post added 03-25-11 at 10:33 PM ----------

Quote:
Originally Posted by tommcd (Post 4303734)
How exactly did you blank the hard drive?
Are you sure you are booting from the CD, and not the hard drive? That error means that grub can not find the root partition. This would happen if you are trying to boot from the hard drive and not the CD.

If you want to dual boot with XP, first install XP to the first primary partition. Use whatever hard drive space you want for XP. Leave the rest of the hard drive unallocated.
Then boot up the Ubuntu install CD and install Ubuntu to the rest of the hard drive. Grub will be installed to the master boot record of the drive and will control booting both operating systems.
What version of Ubuntu are you trying to install? You should be using either 10.04 or 10.10.

And welcome to the LQ forums!
oh sorry and i am using 10.10

tommcd 03-25-2011 10:51 PM
Check your BIOS settings. As I asked in my last post:
Are you sure you are booting from the CD, and not the hard drive? That error means that grub can not find the root partition. This would happen if you are trying to boot from the hard drive and not the CD.
If this error is happening with both the XP and Ubuntu CDs, then the only common denominator here is the hardware.

h.nijjar 03-25-2011 10:59 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by tommcd (Post 4303749)
Check your BIOS settings. As I asked in my last post:
Are you sure you are booting from the CD, and not the hard drive? That error means that grub can not find the root partition. This would happen if you are trying to boot from the hard drive and not the CD.
If this error is happening with both the XP and Ubuntu CDs, then the only common denominator here is the hardware.
Yes I am sure I am booting from the CD and not the hard drive. I went into the Boot Menu and into the BIOS settings to boot from the CD. I could try downloading a different operating system would that do anything?

h.nijjar 03-25-2011 11:01 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by tommcd (Post 4303749)
Check your BIOS settings. As I asked in my last post:
Are you sure you are booting from the CD, and not the hard drive? That error means that grub can not find the root partition. This would happen if you are trying to boot from the hard drive and not the CD.
If this error is happening with both the XP and Ubuntu CDs, then the only common denominator here is the hardware.
Do you know if it is possible to get my computer back to how it was before i installed Ubuntu through BIOS or any other way?

tommcd 03-25-2011 11:31 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by h.nijjar (Post 4303755)
Yes I am sure I am booting from the CD and not the hard drive. I went into the Boot Menu and into the BIOS settings to boot from the CD. I could try downloading a different operating system would that do anything?
Just as an experiment, try disconnecting the hard drive, then try to boot from the CD. If you still get errors, then this is either a problem with the CD or the computer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by h.nijjar (Post 4303755)
Do you know if it is possible to get my computer back to how it was before i installed Ubuntu through BIOS or any other way?
If you blanked out the hard drive, then this will not be possible.
I do not know why you all of a sudden can not boot from either the XP CD or the Ubuntu CD.
Again, the only common denominator here is your hardware. If you are getting the same
grub rescue> error from the XP CD and the Ubuntu CD, then this means that you must be booting from the hard drive, since XP knows nothing about grub.

h.nijjar 03-25-2011 11:41 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by tommcd (Post 4303778)
Just as an experiment, try disconnecting the hard drive, then try to boot from the CD. If you still get errors, then this is either a problem with the CD or the computer.

If you blanked out the hard drive, then this will not be possible.
I do not know why you all of a sudden can not boot from either the XP CD or the Ubuntu CD.
Again, the only common denominator here is your hardware. If you are getting the same
grub rescue> error from the XP CD and the Ubuntu CD, then this means that you must be booting from the hard drive, since XP knows nothing about grub.
I made sure I am not booting from the hard drive it might be the Windows XP i burnt to the CD I can try downloading a different OS what would you reccomend?

h.nijjar 03-25-2011 11:48 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by tommcd (Post 4303778)
Just as an experiment, try disconnecting the hard drive, then try to boot from the CD. If you still get errors, then this is either a problem with the CD or the computer.

If you blanked out the hard drive, then this will not be possible.
I do not know why you all of a sudden can not boot from either the XP CD or the Ubuntu CD.
Again, the only common denominator here is your hardware. If you are getting the same
grub rescue> error from the XP CD and the Ubuntu CD, then this means that you must be booting from the hard drive, since XP knows nothing about grub.
the message that came up when i disconnected the drive was
"DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER"

tommcd 03-26-2011 12:14 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by h.nijjar (Post 4303786)
the message that came up when i disconnected the drive was
"DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER"
This means that the computer is trying to boot from the hard drive.
Go into your BIOS settings, select the boot menu, then select the CDROM as the first boot device. Then hit F10 to save the settings. Then reboot to the XP install CD.
Install XP first, then Ubuntu/

EDDY1 03-26-2011 12:20 AM
Are you getting a message similar to this 1?
Code:
(initramfs) [61.306417] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2 frozen
[ 61.306483] ata1.00: cmd c8/00:08:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 4096 in
[ 61.306599] ata1.00: status { DRDY }
[ 91.444103] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2 frozen
[ 91.444163] ata1.00: cmd c8/00:08:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 4096 in
[ 91.444219] ata1.00: status { DRDY }
Also what's model of computer?

tommcd 03-27-2011 10:26 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by h.nijjar (Post 4303783)
I made sure I am not booting from the hard drive it might be the Windows XP i burnt to the CD I can try downloading a different OS what would you reccomend?
So you are using a homemade XP CD, and not a genuine XP CD form our good friends in Redmond, WA??;)
If so, then there could possibly be a problem with the CD you made. Will your XP CD or the Ubuntu CD boot on a different computer ok??? This would help to rule out problems with your XP and Ubuntu CDs.
If you want to try to boot from a different live CD, I would suggest trying a Parted Magic live CD: http://partedmagic.com/doku.php
If Parted Magic boots ok, then you could use it to partition your hard drive in preparation for (hopefully!!) a successful Ubuntu install.
If you get the same errors using Parted Magic, then this again would point to the hardware as the only common denominator.

EDIT: Are you sure you are burning a iso image of the Ubuntu .iso file to the CD, and that you are not just copying the Ubuntu .iso file to a CD??? If you insert the Ubuntu CD into your CDROM drive and open it's contents onto the computer's desktop, there should be several directories and files in there. If you open up the CD and only see a single .iso file, then you have not burned the CD correctly.
See this for how to properly burn a Ubuntu iso image to a CD: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto
And be sure to burn the CD at the slowest possible speed for best results.


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