Hello, world. . I am sorta new to Linux. Long story short I suffered a severe traumatic brain injury in late 2013, and have been "rebuilding" myself cognitively (and physically, too, actually) ever since. As a result of the brain damage I suffered, my short-term memory has become extremely terrible, and a lot of the memories i had before the accident are either lost forever or hiding somewhere in the recesses of my brain, largely inaccessible to me.

Rebuilding my autobiographical knowledge and awareness has been a big part of this amazing journey as well, interestingly. The closer in time to the accident a memory was formed, the harder it is for me to recall. I was working for a small software company at the time of the accident, and in my last weeks/months just prior to the unfortunate incident, apparently I had started using Ubuntu.

Unfortunately, this is the point in my autobiographical memory where everything basically gets cut off. I have some relatively clear memories of using an Ubuntu GUI, but while trying to install Ubuntu on my new laptop I've encountered nothing but struggles and setbacks. When I go to my old laptop, I appear to already have some version of Ubuntu on it, but when I choose Ubuntu instead of Windows at startup, all I get is “grub>”. For the life of me I can't figure out how to load the GUI instead of or from the “grub” command line. I know this is just the “say hi” part of the forum and not the troubleshooting part, but since the troubleshooting aspect is relatively integral to the why/how/hello thing, I thought I'd include the whole thing. Hopefully I can find the right thread in this forum to help me get to where I'm trying to be.

Number one, good for you. You are in fact lifting yourself up by your bootstraps.


Not sure I know a simple answer. Grub is a loader. Depending on the version and build one might be able to use command line tools to find the location. Command help may show what is built into it. See if find command is there. (might be called different name.)

If you made some custom install to prevent others from accessing it you may have to consider that.

Personally I'd think about using some live media maybe to discover what linux may reside on drive. Some live media can find what might boot even.

You'll find LQ'ers extend a warm and supportive WELCOME to you!
And thank YOU for sharing your journey back!

For the old laptop,
here's something on grub> (mid-page, there's 4 [*sample*] lines that might ...)
For the *new* [Win10?] laptop, 'imho', a *VERY safe&easy* way is VirtualBox

A heartfelt *best wishes*!! Looking forward to hearing about your Linux journey!

p.s. LQ's Advanced Search returns a TON from: grub prompt
Also try selecting thread Titles(vs. Posts). And fyi: goo...'s intitle: etc...

Hello and welcome to the forum, I, too, wish you the best as you continue your "journey of recovery." I would be happy to pray for you, if you'd like. I've seen God do some amazing healings.

In addition to the process Jjanel linked to, I found this utility, which might be of help.

Regards...

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Hello, welcome back to Linux.

Thank you for sharing. I think you are very courageous and I appreciate you are not giving up on life and Linux. I think you are an example and you will give many people good hope. We have all learned something from you. I wish you all the best for the future.

I think it is better you concentrate on the new laptop first. Take it one step at a time. When you'll get used to how Linux and its bootloader works, you'll be able to figure out a solution for the old laptop.

What are the specs of the new machine? Brand, UEFI or BIOS, dual-boot, which Windows?

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The fact that you've got as far as a grub prompt means it isn't a bios or uefi problem. Grub has booted successfully, so you're past that stage, but it can't find your Linux installation so it's dropped back to a prompt. You need to find out why. Can you boot from a rescue disc and check your partitions from there? Find out what partition Ubuntu is on and what the kernel and initrd filenames are, and then someone here can guide you through the process of passing this information on to grub. Once you've got Ubuntu running, you can fix grub permanently from there.

If your recent memories are bad, you may have forgotten about grub. It's the bootloader that most Linux distros use nowadays, replacing lilo. Unlike lilo, it can boot Windows too. But it's a lot more complicated than lilo ever was.

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Thank you all so much for your replies and the resources/links you provided. Honestly I wasn't sure what to expect, it's been a long, long time (as far as I remember) since I've used a forum to communicate about anything besides video games (haha, back in middle school and high school, and before the struggles of adult life and motorcycle accidents beswept me). Actually I do remember that we used internal, company forums at the software company I was working at, but that was mostly company jargon, of course, whereas this is just for the love of knowledge and the desire to be helpful.

The new laptop is/was an HP Envy something that I acquired before MS rolled out Windows 10. It was (obviously?) not initially dual-boot, but I knew I wanted Ubuntu too, so that's what started this whole debacle. Funny enough, I contacted some tech support person before my laptop woes had reached critical mass and he said “yeah...I would have advised against getting Win10”... =__= Anyway, somewhere along the path of messing with msconfig, BIOS, and bootloader settings my new machine became basically completely unresponsive, and then even attempting a factory reset was leaving me with what was beginning to more and more resemble a very expensive, unresponsive brick. I brought the laptop into a CompUSA and said I'd be fine with them wiping everything entirely (pretty much everything on it was either already in the cloud or backed up on an external drive, so I figured "whatever". I told them I just want it to function again, so presumably they'll wipe it and put a clean Win10 on it, which would be fine, I guess.

My other two machines are both Asus, but I don't remember their specs off the top of my head.

Well, accidentally hit “submit” before I was completely done with that last post, but I really need to sleep, so I'll return for more of this tomorrow.

Actually, I used to dual boot Windows, DOS, and Linux using LILO. Frankly, despite the complexity of grub2, it is much easier now.

Clearly the MBR is still grub loaded, and the partition with the grub config is still present or the other boot would not work without errors. Something bad must have happened to the Ubuntu files. This may be fixable from live media, a fairly simple Ubuntu repair (NOTE: NOT a GRUB repair, exactly, unless the Ubuntu stanza of the grub config is what is messed up). If all else fails: a reinstall on the same partitions would give a working dual-boot system, but would obfuscate any information there that it might be handy to preserve and recall or relearn.

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you're a lucky one . it looks like you at least got to keep your motor skills unless someone else typed this for you.

but that uggy grub> prompt ahhhhhh i just reinstall or you could go get supergrub2 and read how to use that or someone else in here could walk you through how to get past that grub> promt ..

I wouldn't reconmend getting rid of that install. you mayhave something within that OS that might spark a memory.

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Ok, so the new one will probably have UEFI. It is quite easy to dual boot in UEFI nowadays.

You need to read a bit about UEFI and how you should remove Secure Boot before going ahead with any installtion. Check these out:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI
http://askubuntu.com/questions/22183...s-10-with-uefi

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Well, awesome news, I finally got Ubuntu/Linux to start working, after what i guess was, ultimately, months of trying. I actually joined the “Ubuntu” Facebook group and posted “halp!” and explained what all was going on, and a very kind, knowledgeable guy (who coincidentally also has brain damage and was in a coma, although not nearly as long as I was) walked me through the whole downloading and setting up and system-confuguration changing. Mysteriously, after I had it working for a while it seemed to disappear, and I had to reinstall it again, don't know what that was all about, but nonetheless I did manage to reinstall it again, so I am happy about that. As I commented in the Facebook group, it is amazing/surprising/odd how happy using Ubuntu makes me! Thanks everyone for your comments and support!

Wonderful news! I hope the fun continues!