Freeze at GRUB Loading...

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#1

Gateway P-6860FX Notebook

It has been running dual boot OpenSUSE / Vista since the 11.0 release. It has been running great with no problems.

I shut it down this morning. A couple hours later I turn it on and I’m stuck at this screen:

GRUB Loading stage1.5.
GRUB loading, please wait…

After leaving it like that for a half hour, I tried the openSUSE DVD getting this:

ISOLINUX 3.63 0x4849e299

I tried a live linux, and even the Vista DVD to at least get one OS going, and it gets stuck at:

Press any key to boot from CD or DVD…

Im scared and clueless as to why this is happening. :’(
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

#2

Do you have more than one hard drive in the system? If so, make sure drives are in correct boot order in BIOS, this is crucial for Grub to work.

#3

Just one partitioned hard drive.

#4

Maybe try getting to the drive through a liveCD of some sort and try reinstalling grub. If that doesn’t work, you got me. :slight_smile:

#5

Sounds to me like a hardware failure like the DVD drive or the RAM are good candidates for those symptoms.

#6

On Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:36:03 GMT
Norukias <Norukias@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:

>
> Gateway_P-6860FX_Notebook
>
> It has been running dual boot OpenSUSE / Vista since the 11.0 release.
> It has been running great with no problems.
>
> I shut it down this morning. A couple hours later I turn it on and I’m
> stuck at this screen:
>
> GRUB LOADING STAGE1.5.
> GRUB LOADING, PLEASE WAIT…
>
> After leaving it like that for a half hour, I tried the openSUSE DVD
> getting this:
>
> ISOLINUX 3.63 0X4849E299
>
> I tried a live linux, and even the Vista DVD to at least get one OS
> going, and it gets stuck at:
>
> PRESS ANY KEY TO BOOT FROM CD OR DVD…
>
> Im scared and clueless as to why this is happening. :’(
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
>

Sounds like either your hard drive, or DVD drive is having issues. GRUB is
loading, sort of… but seems to be stuck at looking for the drive. Yes, it
booted somewhat to get to stage1.5, but that was through the bios drivers,
they might access the drive differently.

The ISOLINUX… bit is from the DVD bootloader… and it too seems to be
failing at the part where the loader takes over reading the drives.

Is it possible to remove the DVD drive in this notebook? Try pulling it out
for a moment, and testing the boot. If it boots up, then maybe the DVD drive
is faulty. Try putting it back in (after shutting down), see if it still
fails. Sometimes contacts can become tarnished causing issues with data
flow, pulling/reinserting can wipe them clean again, making it work.

You might also try removing the hard drive from the notebook, and seeing if
it will boot the DVD. Again, test everything after reassembling it too.

Does the bios setup still see the drive and DVD properly?

Loni

–
L R Nix
lornix@lornix.com

#7

Thank you all for the input!

I checked the BIOS, and the harddrive and DVD drive are listed. This might not make a difference, but I turned off Silent Boot and it ran some tests on start up, one included a RAM check, which passed.

And if you dont mean the tray for DVD drive, I think I would have to take off the whole bottom to get to it. :\

Whats strange is that if it is a hard drive failure (I hope not), I should be able to load up a Live CD correct? So I am leaning toward the faulty DVD drive…but I rarely used it, and the last time was a few weeks ago. :?

Making an attempt at the DVD drive…wish me luck. :open_mouth:

#8

Whats strange is that if it is a hard drive failure (I hope not), I should be able to load up a Live CD correct?

You would need to use a live cd of a distro which can load exclusively to RAM. Puppy is one and I have a feeling PCLinuxOS has that option too.

#9

Interesting, so I tried it (was only trying distros that had a live cd option).

Unfortunately it acted the same with the error from earlier: ISOLINUX 3.63 etc.

Thanks though.

#10

Live cd? Most Distros have one!
But only a handful load to RAM only.
Did you try one of those??

#11

I didnt post it, but I also tried removing the harddrive. Same symptoms.

I also tried the Puppy Linux (with the harddrive both in and out).

#12

That message is from the BIOS; if it gets stuck it means that the DVD or media in it cannot be read. The other messages indicate that media was begun to be read (you get a header) but stopped at the first track. So unless the several media are all bad, that would point to the optical drive.

Unfortunately, you also got the grub error; this hang usually happens when grub cannot access where it was pointed to, that is, the partition where its menu.lst menu file (and the kernel) are located. Taken together with the above, that suggests an I/O error. The optical drive could be hanging the system, preventing both its use and access to the hard drive. Or it could be more serious. Sounds like you might need a technician to look at the machine.

I don’t follow this. Are you saying that Live-CD’s write to disk? If so, where???

#13 
  But only a handful load to RAM only.

I don’t follow this. Are you saying that Live-CD’s write to disk? If so, where???

I mean some load the OS to RAM rather than relying on cd.

Though from the sound of it, this doesn’t sound to good to me. If Norukias can’t even boot from a live cd and says:

I also tried removing the harddrive. Same symptoms.

Mainboard I/O problem?

#14

Yes. It could also be that the optical drive is locking up the bus. Or could be a power failure, either from the supply or a voltage regulator. A tech needs to take a look.

#15

Thanks. Before I did not understand what you meant. Yes, you’re right. With most the OS is on a ramdisk with squashfs, but the apps are pulled from CD to ram on demand. To fit entirely in RAM requires building from the bottom up specifically for that, like Puppy does.