System does not boot after being hibernated

[alinezam]

Hi all,

I had windows 7 (32-bit) on my Toshiba laptop and I installed Ubuntu 10.04. Both OSs were working fine until I put the system on hibernate in Linux and it doesn't boot anymore. I receive a message like this:

error: no such device: f5353891-...
grub rescue>

I have tried the follwoing but the problem still exists:

- I removed the RAM and re-inserted it
- I can use the original Linux cd to boot and I can see my files but don't know how to fix the problem from inside Linux
- I tried a Windows 7 bootable fix disk and no error was found
- Seems that grub is not installed because I had Windows, so I tried to install it but I don't have access to internet on my laptop

Could you help me with this?

Thanks,
Ali

[Vallery Lancey (muscovy)]

Did you do anything in terms of adding/updating software before this happened?

[alinezam (alinezam)]

Thanks Alex for your reply,
Yes, I just remembered that I did update the system. But I didn't think it could be because of that. I am not sure I rebooted the system after the update or not. So, it might be because of the update (I updated 247 programs all at once!) or because I hibernated the system. I am about to re-install the linux but that may just leave a mess and not solve the problem. Do you have any suggestion?
Ali

[Vallery Lancey (muscovy)]

Anything I can suggest will take longer and more effort that the reinstallation. Just remember to live boot back in and save your stuff! Actually, before you do, try running another update just in case there's errors. It might explain it if you stopped it during updates.

For some dry theory, I think it was most likely an update problem, and not one in hibernate. If something actively running is updated, it won't truly take effect until the next time it starts. For example, if a new kernel had a blip or you shut down during the update or something, you wouldn't actually use the new one until next boot and find the problem.

Please let us know if this happens again, at this point I'll call it "bad luck".

[Vallery Lancey (muscovy)]

Also, Windows will work fine again. Ubuntu uses something called a "boot loader", which tells your computer what OS to boot and where to find it. I'm assuming you can't boot Windows as well, because Linux can't load the thing that tells Windows to start.

[alinezam (alinezam)]

Thanks, re-installing Linux resolved the issue. Now both Windows and Linux work fine. But I have a few questions and I would be grateful if you could answer:

1) Should I avoid updating Linux again or it was just a "bad luck" accident, as you said?

2) How can I find out in which partition the new Linux has been installed. I tried to manually choose the same partition as the previous installation but received an error message. So, I let the system decide itself (the default option). I don't know whether now I have two installations of Linux or only one. (see the list below)

3) When I reboot the system I see the following boot list:

Ubuntu with Linux 2.6.32-21-generic
Ubuntu with Linux 2.6.32-21-generic (recovery mode)
memory test (memory 86+)
memory test (memory 86+, serial console 11520)
Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda1)
Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda2)
Windows Vista (loader) (on /dev/sda3)
Windows Vista (loader) (on /dev/sdb1)

What info do you obtain from this? I'm wondering why I have two Windows 7 items?

Thanks

[Vallery Lancey (muscovy)]

1.) I would highly recommend keeping your computer up to date. I'm guessing maybe you shut down or something while it was running? I've helped a few people who powered off during an update of drivers or other core things, with nasty results. To be on the cautious side, open a terminal in Applications -> Accessories, run "sudo apt-get update", then run "sudo apt-get upgrade > ~/apt_log". The first command will check for updates, and the second one will apply them and log itself. If there IS a specific package that's causing issues, we'll know about it.

2.) You can open GParted (I'm pretty sure it's installed by default) under System -> Administration to take a look at and edit partitions. However, you do have only one Linux partition.

3.) I'm not sure why your Windows partitions are showing twice. Perhaps take a look in GParted in case they have boot partitions or something.