Comment 18 for bug 414996

I'm new to ubuntu 9.10. I have used windows XP for years. Recently, my wife purchased a new HP laptop. It has windows 7 installed. I hate windows 7, and got the bright Idea to download Ubuntu 9.10 64 bit version to CD and install on a 32GB USB flash drive. The install went okay. When I decided to reboot my wifes laptop, I was quickly surprised! I noticed that GRUB was trying to load. I was not expecting to see this as I tried to boot into windows. I was seeing the error "No such disk" Then the rescue grub prompt. Next, I rebooted the PC pressed the escape key, and changed the boot order from BIOS to use my USB flash drive. Well, at least I was able to load GRUB2 menu list now and boot into windows or ubuntu 9.10. Well, I have been reading about this problem for two days now. So what have I learned? First, I need to fix my Windows 7 MBR. Second, I can use the rescue grub prompt to mount my usb flash drive, and load the grub2 menu list. Third, I should have read the bug reports first. Lastly, for anyone who is having my same problem, I found these commands work to load the Grub2 menulist when the multi-boot loader is pointing to the first partition.

1. Boot PC. Grub will fail to load and the Grub rescue prompt will be displayed.
2. At the Grub rescue prompt type the following sequence:

grub rescue> set dev=/dev/sdb
grub rescue> set prefix=(hd1,1)/boot/grub
grub rescue>set root=(hd1)
grub rescue>insmod normal
grub:grub>normal

The Grub menu will now load the menu list. Please note that you will need to know which device is USB flash. In my case, I was able to use ubuntu 9.10 and write down the devices.