I tried the live boot CD and boot-repair, also loaded the Desktop install CD, and it looks like all partitions check out OK.
However, when I try to boot Linux (the only bootable partition on the computer) I get a blank screen.
Every so often the screen give me something akin to:
Assuming write through cache
Asking for cache data failed
it appears to start booting, then hangs. Ctrl+Alt+Delete shuts down the machine
The last message during boot is "STarting TiMidity++ ALSA midi emulation... [OK]"
I used boot-repair to generate a boot info report. One thing looks odd to me- it reports a missing core.img on /dev/sda1. Here is the full info:
Boot Info Script 0.61.full + Boot-Repair extra info [Boot-Info August 2nd 2012]
============================= Boot Info Summary: ===============================
= Grub2 (v1.99) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks at sector 1 of
the same hard drive for core.img. core.img is at this location and looks
for (,msdos1)/boot/grub on this drive.
= Windows is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb.
sda1: __________________________________________
File system: ext4
Boot sector type: Grub2 (v1.99)
Boot sector info: Grub2 (v1.99) is installed in the boot sector of sda1
and looks at sector 18406911 of the same hard drive
for core.img, but core.img can not be found at this
location.
Operating System: Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS
Boot files: /boot/grub/grub.cfg /etc/fstab
/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf /boot/grub/core.img
sda2: __________________________________________
File system: Extended Partition
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
sda5: __________________________________________
File system: swap
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
sdb1: __________________________________________
File system: ntfs
Boot sector type: Windows XP: NTFS
Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
Operating System:
Boot files:
============================ Drive/Partition Info: =============================
Drive: sda _______________________________________
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Partition Boot Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 307,339,514 307,339,452 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 307,339,515 312,576,704 5,237,190 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 307,339,578 312,576,704 5,237,127 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Drive: sdb _______________________________________
Disk /dev/sdb: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Partition Boot Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors Id System
/dev/sdb1 2,048 625,142,447 625,140,400 7 NTFS / exFAT / HPFS
"blkid" output: ____________________________________
Device UUID TYPE LABEL
/dev/loop0 squashfs
/dev/sda1 11b4d633-7863-40b2-a6ca-da5f82c3ad0b ext4
/dev/sda5 cb8d65f4-8cf9-4088-b804-e3dea2151033 swap
/dev/sdb1 349E7C109E7BC8BE ntfs Personal1
================================ Mount points: =================================
Device Mount_Point Type Options
/dev/sdb1 /media/Personal1 fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096,default_permissions)
/dev/sr0 /live/image iso9660 (ro,noatime)
...(a bunch of config file info- let me know if anyone wants to see it!)
But usually I just get "Cannot Display This Video Mode", which I know means the video output is not usable by the monitor.
I'm looking for a way to get into a recovery mode.I'd really like to avoid wiping the drive.
Any thoughts?
