ubuntu 14.04 Grub Rescue error

Question

So I installed linux (ubuntu) yesterday on a fresh hdd with a disk. It worked fine till today when it froze after I had had it in sleep mode and I had to turn it off and on again to be greeted with a message

error: file '/boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found. entering rescue mode... 
grub rescue>

I am not dual booting and I dont know exactly what to do. I'm relatively new to ubuntu and linux in general. My pc is a dell latitude laptop. Don't know if I should just convert back to windows...

it was legacy but I switched it to UEFI and still had problems. I searched a couple of tutorials to fix the problem some involving me to put in my disc and going into terminal and doing some updates on grub. I eventually caved seeing as how I need a working computer and installed windows — Jose B, Oct 14 '14 at 05:30
See http://askubuntu.com/questions/266429/error-file-grub-i386-pc-normal-mod-not-found or bug reported https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub-installer/+bug/1305342 — αғsнιη, Oct 14 '14 at 05:36
oh i see. So I have a hdd of 1tb so if i has just allocated memory to a /boot it would have worked perfectly fine. So if i do get it working how would I do that now? could i just make another parition to make that? I only installed / and /root — Jose B, Oct 17 '14 at 03:13

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 14 '14 at 04:48

1

Run this command in a terminal window (press Ctrl+Alt+F1 key combination at login prompt if needed to enter text-mode Ubuntu/console):

    sudo update-grub

Reboot and see what next. If you still have problems after reboot, visit this page where you'll find some official guide for Ubuntu repair with the installation media. Make sure you still have Ubuntu installation DVD or the Live USB pendrive from where you installed Ubuntu.

answered Oct 14 '14 at 04:48

Taz D.

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Thanks hopefully this works for someone else since It didn't for me. I saw this response way after I had already installed windows. hopefully in the future if I ever have problems I can look back on this post and see a way to fix it. But for now i'm too inexperienced for linux seeing as i'm no coder (and it involved a lot of code for my tastes) thank you for responding however. – Jose B Oct 14 '14 at 05:32
Your HDD is probably listed as /dev/sda, and your root partition is probably /dev/sda1/. Once you have this info (to make sure open Gparted after you boot the Live DVD) you can run those commands from the official guide as they are, just copy-paste them in a terminal window, and replace X or XY with /dev/sda/, or /dev/sda1/ where required. When it comes to reinstalling grub, make sure you choose /dev/sda/ - the entire HDD - and not /dev/sda1/ which is your root partition. You can save that recovery guide as a simple html page, and use it after booting the Live DVD. – Taz D. Oct 14 '14 at 07:02
ok so i reinstalled it but it didn't work still even after I had installed it again. I'm still having issues with the normal.mod dont know what to do i'm still stuck on the same page. I tried your way but still nothing I didn't even include /dev/sda1 and i just tried to do that old process all over again. One thing I noticed is that /dev/sda is locked so I can't modify it. Can you help me again?? – Jose B Oct 16 '14 at 04:10
Go to this page and choose either 32bit iso image (if you run Ubuntu 32bit) or the other one, boot-repair-disk-64bit.iso, for Ubuntu 64bit. Burn image on a CD or write it on USB pendrive with Unetbootin. Boot the CD/USB pendrive and choose Recommended Repair. After you finished, reboot and hopefully youll be ok. More info on this page. If it works fine, run sudo update-grub in Ubuntu, to be able to boot Windows too. – Taz D. Oct 16 '14 at 05:08
is it possible to get that file as a torrent file? – Jose B Oct 17 '14 at 03:15
I was able to get a torrent file but it didn't fix it. Here is a paste of what happened http://paste.ubuntu.com/8577432/ – Jose B Oct 17 '14 at 05:20
Your first partition (/dev/sda1) is an extended partition and it should be a primary partition. You installed Ubuntu on /dev/sda5, which is ok. But /dev/sda1, where Windows is probably present (it is flagged as boot partition), must be a primary partition formatted as NTFS because you want Windows in there. I mean it is not a big rule, but almost everybody has /dev/sda1/ or the first partition as primary, and the rest can be either logical drives inside an extended partition or other primary partitions up to 4 total primary partition. You played too much with your partition table. – Taz D. Oct 17 '14 at 06:42
ok so now it's telling me I have no partition to boot from. Also I want to know how should I be partitioning my terabyte hdd? – Jose B Oct 17 '14 at 20:23
So how would I make it turn into something I need? Do I/ how would I format it? – Jose B Oct 17 '14 at 23:13
Terabyte hdd. It must have had some gpt partition style initially. Maybe it still does. Read this article, and better find some friend who knows how to deal with large HDD devices and adjust BIOS settings. MBR partition style is easy, you create one large partition as primary (NTFS), and then you create one large extended partition using the rest of the free space (inside it you can create as many logical drives as you need, formatted as Linux ext4, Linux swap, NTFS, FAT32). Next you can install multiple OS like Win 7 and Ubuntu. – Taz D. Oct 18 '14 at 07:07

ubuntu 14.04 Grub Rescue error

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