Is my hard drive thrashed?

[Dan Hensley]

On Thu, 2007-02-15 at 14:11 -0900, Fred Erickson wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-02-14 at 12:50 -0700, Dan Hensley wrote:
> > 
> > When I try booting, I see the following grub message:
> > 
> > GRUB
> > 
> > At this point the computer hangs.
> > 
> > My question is, how can I get out of this bind?  Is my hard drive 
> > trashed, or just the boot record?  Or is it something else?  When I boot 
> > off the rescue CD the hard drive contents appear fine.  I just can't get 
> > it to boot off my system.
> > 
> Yesterday, after updating about the same number of programs as you did,
> including a new kernel, the computer wanted to reboot, so I attempted a
> reboot and was stopped at the "GRUB" command as you were.
> 
> I didn't try anything at that point. I used my FC6 DVD and booted to
> rescue mode (after looking at the disk with Knoppix & qtparted). From
> the rescue prompt, sh-3.xx#, I entered the grub command. At the grub
> prompt entered: root (hd1,0), then: setup (hd0), after grub finished, I
> rebooted and my normal boot screen appeared and I was able to boot to
> the new FC6 kernel.

I think I ended up doing about the same thing you did (grub-install
versus going into grub), but I'll give your suggestion a try.  Except
that I'll have to use root (hd0,0).  But my try had no effect this time.

I think there is something seriously screwed up with the FC6 update
system, because this has happened to me twice in a month.

I ordered a new hard drive that should arrive tomorrow in case it's a
hardware problem.  My motherboard or BIOS may also have something to do
with it, but I'm not sure.  Right now my system is up and running
because I built a boot floppy.  But I see another kernel update waiting
to be installed.  I hesitate to download it because I don't know what
kind of mess it will make with my system.

Dan