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I have a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.04 from DVD on a wiped hard drive. After it finished installing it asked me to remove the media and hit enter. Which I got the message:

error: no such device: 487e0bd2-2436-495a-a5e7-fe240a51ff20.
grub rescue>

I reinstalled again and got the same message, except the long string was different.

I've tried boot-repair from the livecd, with no results.

I've seen some recommendations of running sudo fdisk -l and using that to edit the boot manager, again from the livecd. But I have no idea how to do that or if that's a good next step.

How do I finish installing Ubuntu, so I can boot up and start my first venture into Linux?

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Did you use the default partition arrangement during install or did you customize it? – Caleb Aug 23 '11 at 8:12
@Caleb - Yes. I used the default. – Nixphoe Aug 23 '11 at 12:07

1 Answer

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This may sound crazy, but I have an idea that your BIOS is being fruity.

The first thing I would do if a system of mine gave that result would be to go to the motherboard manufacture website and download the latest BIOS. Then I would use the BIOS's "fail safe defaults" and try again. If that works, switch to "optimized defaults".

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This is an old Dell Optiplex. I'll need to dig up a floppy disk =\ Thanks for the advice. If I can find one, I'll update. Thanks – Nixphoe Aug 23 '11 at 19:16
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I think the mother board is dying. Trying to set this up and just booting into the bios now I'm getting errors and random "no keyboard found" messages. Thanks for helping me run this down! – Nixphoe Sep 16 '11 at 12:40

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