Can only boot in recovery mode (SOLVED)

[norm.h]

I have installed Linux Mint 13 on a new Novatech nSpire laptop, and have a problem with booting.

This is what happens:
Power on - nothing happens, just a blank but lit, screen. I have waited for up to 10 mins.
Power off - wait 2 minutes and power on.

I then get 3 GRUB options:
1) Linux Mint 3.2.0-32
2) Linux Mint 3.2.0-32 (recovery mode)
3) Mem test

If I choose Option 1, boot hangs at "wlan0 - no IPv6 router present" or "eth0 - no IPv6 router present" if connection is wired.
Wait for 5 minutes, cursor is flashing, but no activity on the HDD indicator.

Power off, wait 2 minutes and power on.
Select Option 2, and in the dialogue that eventually appears, select "resume normal boot", and laptop boots OK.
Is this a GRUB problem, a router problem, or something else, and what can I do about it?

[cwsnyder]

Since it is hanging BEFORE GRUB or boot, I suspect a hardware problem, nothing to do with Mint. I would check your RAM (option 3) if you can get that far. If there is no RAM problem showing up, try booting from Live media (DVD or thumb drive which was used to install Mint), and do an fsck (no options) and allow it to check your entire drive with AC mains power connected. If there is still no problem showing up, I would suspect your battery or power adapter, but you may also have a bad install or bad copy of Mint on your installation media.

[DrHu]

I would also set your BIOS (if that is the type of machine you have, not an EFI boot) to safe or default mode, which are the safest values for your system board (main board/motherboard)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS

And you may wish to check the hardware connections for your devices, such as the hard drives, perhaps re-seat them, and possibly clean the lens of your CD/DVD reader or the CD media
--as well as the other suggestion of checking your hard drive partition via fdisk (system check on boot, it scans every so often anyway) and after one normal boot, if all the devices are readable and ready, your system should be able to load up (boot) normally..

Your laptop specs are ??
http://www.computeractive.co.uk/ca/revi ... -hard-disk
--are you using an SSD hard drive, if so check the issues around Linux + SSD drives as the boot device !
http://forum.novatech.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?53-Linux
--novasphere forums..

[norm.h]

Quote: "you may also have a bad install or bad copy of Mint on your installation media."
I don't think it's the media as I've used it on another machine without any problems.

There is a bit more to this than I have explained so far.
I had to install a compat-wireless driver (with help from Ubuntu forums) to get the wifi to work, which it did successfully.
It was after installing this driver that I encountered the booting problem.

Quote: " I would check your RAM (option 3) if you can get that far."
I did that - no problems.

Quote: "I would also set your BIOS (if that is the type of machine you have, not an EFI boot) to safe or default mode,"
There doesn't seem to be such an option in the BIOS.

I didn't do fdsk.

I took your advice and did another clean install, and all works fine until I reinstall the wifi driver, and then the boot problem reappears.
I have posted back to the Ubuntu forums, and await their reply.

[norm.h]

On advice from elsewhere, I installed the 3.6.6 kernel, and the compat-wireless 3.6.6-1 driver from linux wireless.org.
I've done a full reboot and couple of restarts and all is well.

Thanks to all for you interest and help.