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I've just finished installing Ubuntu onto a computer which, has 1 SATA DVD-RW device and 1 IDE HDD on slave. Just after installation finished GRUB threw me an error like this:

error: attempt to read or write outside of disk 'hd0'

I tried this: What to do when I get an "attempt to read or write outside of disk 'hd0'" error and Boot Repair does not solve the problem?. And it didn't work. Does it REALLY have something to do with my only HDD being on slave? And how do I fix this anyway?

UPDATE

I've managed to set it to master by randomly changing the jumper... And now it's not doing anything AT ALL. It just goes black. And NOTHING AT ALL happens, just stays black. BUT! Ctrl + Alt + Del does restart the PC. Any help now?

Community
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Samuel H.
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  • Does your BIOS support cable select. System has to be very old to be the old master/slave. But with cable select you have to have the newer 80 conductor cable and jumper for cable select. If you only have one IDE drive, it should be master. Is this an old Dell where you have SATA1 as data only drive? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA – oldfred Nov 21 '14 at 16:10
  • Oh, now that I've made an closer inspection on my HDD it does have the cable select thing, but it needs 2 jumpers to "activate it". (I think it needs 2 the drawing at the HDD top is like: :◘◘:) So, what do I do? There's any way o improvise a jumper? Or can I fool, or force my HDD to be master? – Samuel H. Nov 21 '14 at 17:46
  • It is not just drive, but BIOS & cable must be cable select. Usually it is just one jumper, but I changed to SATA almost 10 years ago just when SATA become only $10 more than PATA. I really, really hated those tiny jumpers and the wide cables. – oldfred Nov 21 '14 at 19:01

1 Answers1

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The problem was: GRUB bugs out when the HDD is the only slave IDE drive. You have to make your way to make it master. After that you have to re-install GRUB, which I did by installing boot repair in a live CD using the advice here on the Ubuntu help wiki.

Zanna
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Samuel H.
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