[N120 probably others too] How to fix: Grub keeps rebooting

[jordis]

Hi
After installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) in my N120 (alongside the original WinXP), the grub startup screen was showing the usual options for “Ubuntu” and, in the “Other operating systems” section, I could see 2 entries:
Windows Vista (loader)
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition.

The second entry (Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition) is obvious: boots into the Windows partition.
But the first entry got me intrigued, so I tried it. It booted to the Samsung Recovery partition. My initial thoughts were “good, I can get to the recovery partition from grub in case I need to restore the netbook”. The Samsung Recovery Solution loaded, and I just exited (since I didn’t want to restore anything). So far so good.
After rebooting the netbook, the grub screen whould show:
GRUB loading stage1.5.
and the machine reboot. It got into an endless reboot loop. Great. Not.
Apparently booting to Samsung Recovery partition did something to the partition MBR that grub didn’t appreciate.
The solution was to boot to the Ubuntu Netbook Remix Live CD (well, actually Live USB) and follow the instructions in:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=224351
Make sure you follow the instructions in that forum thread.
To sum up, this did the trick for me:

Code:

sudo grub

Code:

find /boot/grub/stage1

this will return where grub is installed, in my case it was hd0,3

Code:

root (hd?,?)

where the question marks in (hd?,?) should be replaced with the numbers what the previous command returned (in my case it was “0,3”)

Code:

setup (hd0)

Code:

quit

This got my grub working again.

Bottom line: Do NOT use “Windows Vista (loader)” entry in grub menu!

Pheew! that was close! What’s next “surprise” gonna be?

[jez]

Thanks for sharing that jordis, will prove useful to someone sooner or later.

[Author]

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