My desktop will not boot without the USB drive in it

[Derek Tattersall]

I just replaced the drive in my laptop. I wanted to get some files off
of the old one so I put it into a USB enclosureand plugged it into my
desktop machine. I was able to access the files in the Logical Volume on
the old drive using the instructions in an article in this month's Linux
Journal. Like so:

First I got the device info off the drive:

  dd if=/dev/sdh3 bs=512 count=255 skip=1 of=/etc/lvm/backup/VolGroup01

and edited VolGroup01 to remove all the binary cruft, and label the
physical device correctly.

then:

  vgcfgrestore -r VolGroup01 VolGroup01
  vgchange VolGroup01 -a y

and the filesystem was in /dev/VolGroup01/LogVol00. So far so good.

I unmounted the filesystem, and removed the USB drive.

There was one problem though. Now my desktop machine will not boot
without the USB drived plugged into it. It won't even get as far as
loading grub. The machine goes through the power on bios screens,
identifies the internal (SATA) drive and then hangs with a blinking
cursor. I went into the bios setup, and the USB drive is not in the boot
order. I even reinstalled grub with the USB drive disconnected. 

So, what did I do wrong, and how do I fix it?


Thanks.

Derek Tattersall