Zorin 8.1 won't boot - error failure .... grub rescue

OK, I am new to Linux & took a bit of a punt on choosing to install Zorin as opposed to other Linux OS like Mint Mate etc.

I was really pleased for the first couple of days - great GUI, fast & responsive (I only have a celeron). But this morning the computer (Zorin 8) wouldn't boot- it gives this message almost immediately after turning on the computer-

error:failure reading sector 0 x 8 a 8 from 'hd 0'. Entering rescue mode. grub rescue>

The night before I created & saved a couple of Libre Word Processor documents & saved them to the internal hard drive- I obviously now can't access them - which is incredibly annoying.

What does this error mean?- does it suggest there is a problem with the Internal Hard Drive? (I do suspect there is a problem with the HD) And how do I go about at least recovering those 2 Libre documents &/or getting the computer back working?

I'm pretty naive on grub!

Many thanks for any help,
Paul

Hi, it could well be a hard drive failure but first things first - you stated that you think it might be HD failure - has it been more noisy than usual for example? Do you know the manufacturer of the Hard Drive? If you do, I would advise going to the respective website and look for the respective Diagnostic Tools, or download Ultimate Boot CD and use their HD diagnostic tools accordingly:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

To make sure your hard drive is not completely dead, boot into the BIOS and the main screen should list all your attached devices - if your hard drive is not showing it could just be coincidental that your hard drive has died. If you have any important data on their you would need to take it to a tech specialist who deals in data recovery - if the hard drive shows up as being present, boot the machine with your Zorin Disc and you should be able to access the Hard Drive - look for /home/yourusername/documents - and copy to USB thumb/flash drive.

Keep us posted!

Swarfendor - that didn't work so I tried the following couple of commands using SystemRescueCD;

root@sysresccd /root % sudo fdisk -l
zsh: correct 'sudo' to '_sudo' [nyae]? y
_arguments:comparguments:312: can only be called from completion function
root@sysresccd /root %


so I them tried fsarchiver (see below) - me trying to interpret it below - shows sda which is an external Seagate 1tb HD, the sr0 is the SystemRescueCD - so in both of these commands, (as far as I can interpret - the Internal Hard Drive (where teh Zorin OS is installed & the Libre documents I saved- isn't recognised. I also tried gparted - but once again it gives a 'no partition' status



root@sysresccd /root % fsarchiver probe simple
[======DISK======] [=============NAME==============] [====SIZE====] [MAJ] [MIN]
[sda ] [Desktop ] [ 931.51 GB] [ 8] [ 0]
[sr0 ] [DVD-RW DVR-216 ] [ 455.41 MB] [ 11] [ 0]

[=====DEVICE=====] [==FILESYS==] [======LABEL======] [====SIZE====] [MAJ] [MIN]
[loop0 ] [squashfs ] [<unknown> ] [ 341.51 MB] [ 7] [ 0]
[sda1 ] [<unknown> ] [<unknown> ] [ 931.50 GB] [ 8] [ 1]
root@sysresccd /root %

does this all mean I have a damaged internal hard drive?

First off, I would check your BIOS first screen, if a hard drive is present it will show it - I will post back later with a photo of mine.

Update: 9.35 GMT



If you know the manufacturer of your Hard Drive then it should show up in the POST screen as above.



If any of the controllers report none in the screen above or 'NOT DETECTED' it means you have a hard drive failure - if you have SATA drives, just make sure that all the connections to the motherboard and to the drive are intact and not loose - I have had this happen to me on this rig using non-CoolerMaster SATA cables.

this is a shot of my 1st screen - as you can see Device 1 is my external HD - a Seagate, Sata 3 - DVD drive, Sata 1 IDE Hard Disk ..... 'Capable and staus BAD'

Hi,

try disabling "Smart" in BIOS and see if that helps!.

^ I'm struggling to find BIOS - SMART setting.

but this morning I have just tried the fdisk command again -

mint@mint ~ $ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00005b6d

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 972597247 486297600 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 972599294 976771071 2085889 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 972599296 976771071 2085888 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 16.8 GB, 16777216000 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 16000 cylinders, total 32768000 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x6f20736b

This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 ? 778135908 1919645538 570754815+ 72 Unknown
/dev/sdb2 ? 168689522 2104717761 968014120 65 Novell Netware 386
/dev/sdb3 ? 1869881465 3805909656 968014096 79 Unknown
/dev/sdb4 ? 2885681152 2885736650 27749+ d Unknown

Partition table entries are not in disk order
-----
So this is now showing sda as a 500gb - so it now recognises it (the internal HD???)

given that it now appears to recognise the internal 500gb hard drive (beats me why now) so I went to the HD through the 'Computer' folder - when I double clicked on the HD's icon - I this pop-up error message

Unable to mount drive-Error mounting /dev/sda1 at /media/mint/bcf2eaf3-bc30-4b56-8600-ca68c77b15af: Command-line `mount -t "ext4" -o "uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid" "/dev/sda1" "/media/mint/bcf2eaf3-bc30-4b56-8600-ca68c77b15af"' exited with non-zero exit status 32: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so


so I tried $ dmesg | tail & got-
mint@mint ~ $ dmesg | tail
[ 2418.180102] ata3.00: revalidation failed (errno=-2)
[ 2418.180108] ata3.00: disabled
[ 2418.180131] ata3: EH complete
[ 2418.180169] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled error code
[ 2418.180174] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda]
[ 2418.180176] Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[ 2418.180179] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] CDB:
[ 2418.180182] Read(10): 28 00 00 00 08 88 00 00 08 00
[ 2418.180194] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 2184
[ 2418.180216] EXT4-fs (sda1): can't read group descriptor 16

Hi,

if you can boot into the recovery mode (2nd option in menu then 2nd option again) and select "root", then enter the following command:

Code:

fsck -y /dev/sda

The "y" denotes "yes to all changes/fixes" which saves you having to sit there and watch things!.

(sda is assumming you want to check the whole HDD, change the ending to sda1 and so on to check all partitions one after the other)

If the drive is mounted, unmount with:

Code:

umount /dev/sda

If you run FSCK from a live CD in a terminal:

Code:

sudo su

then:

Code:

fsck /dev/sda

Let us know if this helps.