Hi Everyone
I have installed so many linux OS.
last time i tried to installed on on my friends PC, the installation went fine. But when the Computer restarted to boot up the FC9. I get an error saying:
now i have checked to BIOS setting the computer does try to boot from the hard drive, and the hard drvie seem to be fine as i can access it through knoppix.
Can somebody please help?
Thank you all in advance.

Perhaps grub didn't get installed properly? You don't happen to have a floppy drive with a floppy in there do you?

I tried installing Windows XP and UBUNTU on it but had the same problem.
It Does have a Floppy Drive But there is NOT any Floppy Disk in it.

How do you know the installation went fine?
Is this the first reboot after installation?
The only time i have seen that error is BEFORE installing an o/s(forgot to put the disc in the dvd drive!).
So the machine was trying to boot from dvd,found no disc,and then tried to boot from the hard drive.
Hence the same error you have.
Regards
The trooper

Yeah, make the hard drive the first bootable device. And where did you specify it to install grub at, the MBR or first sector, etc?

And if you had problems with Windows and Ubuntu, it's probably something BIOS or hardware related that's causing this issue, not the OS.

i think the installation was fine as i didnt get any errors during the installation. and the DVD i used to install FC9 works as it is installed on this computer im using.
the BIOS is now set to just boot from the hard drive to presisily ensure that the computer is booting from hard drive.

what has just accrued to me is that this computer is manufactured by advent and they like many other computer manufactures have placed a recovery partition on the hard drive. I have deleted this partition. could it be that they have some how changed the boot loader?

Did you delete the recovery partition correctly? Was it the 1st primary with the mbr ?
The main thing is that the partition on which you install grub must be bootable. You can do that with say the Super Grub Disk

Hi thanks.
but how do i check to see if the grub has been installed on a bootable partition. and sorry again i dont know what mbr is.
I used Knoppix to Delete the partition but i shall give it another go.
but i would be very grateful if some one could tell me how can one check if grub has been installed on a particular partition.

MBR = Master Boot Record

I Still have no idea, how to check my MBR, or if grub is on the Partition which is Bootable.
How even i have checked the Disk on my trusty Knoppix, and the disk seem to have only two partitions one of which is a linux SWAP ( i do not know what thats for, but i know it should be there) and it not bootable. and the second partition is where the DVD has installed the FC9 OS.

me again
i wonder if this will help at all

i used my live cd and used
used fdisk to see which partition is bootable
then mounted that partition
then used chroot /mnt
grub-install /dev/sda1
it said /dev/sda1: NOT found or mot a block device

Now i dont know what that means.
SOMEONE PLEASE HELP

When you are installing a Linux OS, the last thing on most installs is to install bootloader to..., gives you an option, mbr is default, you can select a partition (should be root partition of OS you are installing) to install to.

I would suggest you google for "SuperGrubDisk" and download and keep it as it is good for restoring bootloader for Linux and Windows.

Swap is used when you have run out of RAM and is usually created but if you have a lot of RAM, not necessary.

The only one who knows where you installed GRUB is you?

Disk Boot Failure is an error that comes up if you have a loose connection to your hardrive, from the Power Supply, cable, etc. but if you can access from Knoppix this is probably not it.

Use Knoppix and post the output of fdisk -l. Also, what do you have in your /boot/grub/menu.lst (or grub.conf) file? Try this method to install Grub, log in as root and type 'grub' to get a grub prompt:

grub> root (hd0,0)
grub>setup (hd0)
grub>quit

This assumes your root partition is sda1. This will install Grub's stage1 to the mbr and the rest of the bootloader files to the root partition, sda1.

Do you have the initrd and vmlinuz files in the /boot directory?
grub> find /sbin/init
grub> find /boot/vmlinuz

here is the out put for fdisk -l:
and this is my grub.conf:
and this is menu.lst content
OK, but i think this the problem, coz as i tried to do as it was said above i get errors, here is the full log of it.

If your problem is not solved, then boot with the FC9 cd/dvd in rescue mode.

........and finally chroot ... (follow instructions and mount the root partition)

# grub-install /dev/sda

(or /dev/hda)

Hi all again
thank you for your response, but I didnt understand the above comments from amani.

I dont think its to do with the grub not being installed properly. I say this because even when i try to install windows or any other OS on this hard drive it just simply fails to boot up.

So i gus this problem is a bit more involved that i initially thought.