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Dell Inspiron 1000 Problems


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#1
zoltri

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Hello there,

After all my adventures with this lovable Dell Inspiron 1000 Laptop, and my countless hours of searching trough the net and tries to fix it, i just can't take it anymore. So i decided to try my chances here, and ask you guys for some support if you are willing to give it :)

So my latest problem is the following:

Last OS was Linux Ubuntu 8.10, was running fine ( I was actually happy about the laptop for once :) )
and then i decided that i wanted the original XP back on.
That's when it became hard. My cd's wouldn't boot, after a few tries
i got the Ubuntu Live Cd to boot. After that i cheked my partitions
and there were 3. Two of them were locked, those are probably the linux ones,
and one that wasn't locked ( I guess that was the one for normal program installations
and data storage ).

I can't even begin to explain why, but.. i deleted that last one. ( Now that i think of it.. very idiotic. I should have tried to run the XP Dell CD trough Linix ) I thought maybe it'll help me unlock the other ones so i could delete and format and etc. But well it didnt work.

Now i am unable to boot from anything, and i am also getting the Grub Error 18

I don't really know what to do.. i will continue searching for clues and i hope you guys can help me.

By the way, i read somewhere that the Error 18 "Grub Loading, please wait..." has something to do with the size of the HD.

Thank you for your time.
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#2
hawklord

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i believe this happens on 'older' systems where the hdd exceeds the bios,

if you want to install windows back on, then grub will be removed from the mbr - no more error 18,

if you want to install linux back on then i suggest a clean install with a /boot partition at the start of the hdd of around 500mb's
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#3
zoltri

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Hey, thank you for the reply.

Yeah, i read about it, and it gives that because of the HDD exceeding bios, just as you stated in your post.

What i find funny, is that it won't let me boot anything at all... HDD, Live CD of any kind..
which brings me to the question.. why did it let me boot Ubuntu and install it the first time. ( with the drive being so huge in the first place. )

^^^-Modifed-^^^-> I just read up on it, and I answered that... it wasn't installed. Came with the Linux installation, or am i wrong.

I don't quite know what you mean by removing grub from mbr , nor do i have an idea of how its done. ( Ofc, next 30 mins will be devoted to finding out how. )

If you can give a little bit more detail about how to solve this i'd apreaciate it alot, considering it seems like you know exactly what's going on.

Thank you for your time,

-Zoltri

Edited by zoltri, 24 July 2009 - 02:04 PM.

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#4
hawklord

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how was your ubuntu installed at first ?

was it installed 'inside' windows (using wubi) or did you wipe the drive and do a clean install ?
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#5
zoltri

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It was a clean install, on a brand new HDD.

I am having problems booting from live cds. But i had a successful try yesteray. ( Ubuntu live cd boot. ) So if there is a way to do it trough the live cd, then good.

I tried some commands in the terminal, had no luck.
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#6
hawklord

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ok,

which operating system do you want to install ?

i've never had an error 18, but i know a little about it,
i also cannot help with ubuntu as i cannot get it to boot on my machine - apart from in a virtual machine,
but i do have linux as my operating system (mandriva and pclinuxos),

.........considering it seems like you know exactly what's going on.

i am under no illusions that i am an expert

do you know how much ram is installed ?
have you tried any other live cd's ?
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#7
zoltri

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It's a dell inspiron 1000 laptop, so it did come with some cds. Dell cd Win XP Home, other than that i have a win 98 CD, the Ubuntu Live CD, Along with the dell package is :
Drivers and Utilities CD
Application CDs

Ive tried the DELL OS one, = No boot.
Ive tried the Win 98 one, = No boot.
Ubuntu Live CD, = Boots sometimes... (Considering all this, i am thinking of a possible CD-Rom problems. But since it was able to boot the Ubuntu Live CD ones, ill be able to start it up again.)

I am now getting the Error 15. Yesterday i had a lucky boot with the Ubuntu CD, and i recreated the partition I had deleted. That's when it went from error 18 to error 15 now.


Getting it back to being able to normal boot Ubuntu from HDD, would be nice. And from there to properly uninstall completely Ubuntu. I want to reinstall the original Dell Copy of Windows XP Home that came with the Laptop in the first place.
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#8
hawklord

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ok, error 15 means that grub (the bootloader) is looking in the wrong place for your boot device (simply put)
the error 15 has nothing at all to do with why you cannot boot cd's, but you will need to boot to a live cd to fix the error,

and as you want to install xp then this is not a problem, as grub (GRan Unified Bootloader) is a linux thing and will be swapped to NTLDR (New Technology LoaDeR) which is a windows thing,

there is no need to uninstall ubuntu as an install of xp will format the hdd to ntfs from ext2/3 which linux uses, so it will be erased,
all you need to do is boot from the xp cd - which by the sound of your issues, may well be a cd-rom problem
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#9
zoltri

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Yeah, I know about the Grub being swapped laters with the apropriate equivalent for windows.

Let's say i want to fix things with Ubuntu, so i can use it again.

After i get it to boot the live CD, what then?
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#10
hawklord

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the /boot/grub/menu.lst (list not first) needs to be edited in your installed system to point to the partition where the boot image is stored,

type this in a console as root

fdisk -l

and post the output in code
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#11
zoltri

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Okay, give me a sec to boot it up.

( Would be easier if you have access to some instant messenger :) )
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#12
zoltri

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Added you,
[/code]Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0008562f

   Device Boot	  Start		 End	  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1			   1	   19294   154979023+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2		   19295	   19457	 1309297+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5		   19295	   19457	 1309266   82  Linux swap / Solaris
[code]


Sorry for double posting.

Edited by zoltri, 26 July 2009 - 10:30 AM.

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#13
hawklord

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i believe you have a partition missing, this is mine

Device Boot	  Start		 End	  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *		   1		1019	 8185086   83  Linux
/dev/hda2			1020		3738	21840367+   5  Extended
/dev/hda5			1020		1528	 4088511   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda6			1529		3738	17751793+  83  Linux

as you can see you are missing sda6
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#14
zoltri

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Alright, I am happy to report that with the useful help of Hawklord I was able to fix the problem.

Thank you for your time. -Zoltri
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