No GRUB after a fresh install, or so it seems

[Veteropinguis]

I decided to take the plunge and just run in and screw around with GRUB. I found out that GRUB was located on (sda1,0), so I ran

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setup (hd1,0

.) I got GRUB to load, but I just got an Error 15 when I tried to boot anything. I went back to the Live CD, and edited my menu.lst. I changed groot=(hd1,0) to (hd0,0), thinking that might be the problem, but still got an Error 15. I shut down, unplugged my 160 GB drive, and rebooted. I got an error 21 when trying to boot Mint and Error 15 when trying to load Ubuntu. I started to try and draw conclusions from this, then decided to take an easier way out. I popped in my GParted CD, deleted all partitions, and reinstalled. Total reinstallation time was a bit over 20 minutes, so far everything has been wonderful. I was hoping to learn more about Mint by trying to fix this problem myself, but I didn't want to work myself in to a hopelessly complex situation. Overall I consider this a very positive installation experience; had I not kept making things difficult in an attempt to educate myself, I would have just reformatted, reinstalled, and been done quite soon. After my last nightmares with XP I realized that I had no real reason to stick with it. Mint is currently the most attractive distro for me, so I'll be sticking around. Many posts on this forum were educational, even if they didn't apply to my situation. So thank you, forum denizens, for such an active, helpful, and accessible forum.[/b]

I think this is my problem but I'm not sure and I don't want to do the wrong thing: http://linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php/How ... t.27s_Grub*

I have been trying to dual-boot from separate hard drives but that has not been going well. Something about Linux makes my XP install pitch a fit and I finally realized, after a lot of on and off Linux use, that I'm just going to go all the way. I've mucked with Ubuntu in the past and tried Mint 6 quite a while ago (used it for about a day) and it seems like it's the distro I'd prefer to use full-time.

I have one 160 GB drive (sda) and one 250 GB drive (sdb). The 160 has only ever had Ubuntu 9.10 on it and I'm leaving it alone as it's where I've backed up my files (anything crucial is online but I'd like to keep a music backup). The 250 was initially supposed to be my Windows drive, however now it's just my main drive. I'm trying to install Mint on the 250.

I tried installing Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid last night and it froze at 94%. This morning I made a Mint 7 CD and decided to install that. However, now I have a strange problem: the installation went perfectly but I have no GRUB. When I boot my computer, the Intel Boot Agent loads, mucks around with some DHCP and MAC thing, then tells me to reboot. Right now I'm back in the Mint 7 CD.

I'm not terrified of the terminal but I'm still an extreme novice. I'll follow whatever instructions I'm given.

*I tried following this and couldn't save the changes to my menu.lst when I did it from the GUI as the Wiki suggested. However when I then tried to load from the terminal, I got this:

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 *** VTE ***: Failed to load terminal capabilities from '/etc/termcap'

Hitting 'enter' does nothing, and pressing Backspace just makes a bunch of random characters. I can type, copy, and paste, but that's it. What's going on?

EDIT: I rebooted the Live CD and checked the disk for errors- it's fine. I reinstalled and had the same problem.

Here's my installation procedure:

1. Boot the Live CD
2. Click the 'install' button on the desktop
3. Select my 250 GB drive and choose 'use entire drive'. Curiously, the installer says that I've got Ubuntu 9.04 installed, not Mint 7.
4. Fill in the remaining boxes and watch the installer. Everything goes fine- GRUB installed, there were no hangs or errors.
5. Reboot when prompted.
6. Get stuck with the Intel bootloader, get confused.

Any suggestions at all would be really helpful, I've got no clue here.

[Husse]

I think you are confused by the way grub counts - it starts from zero so (hd0,0) is sda1
There is an ugly bug in grub (grub 1) so if you have many partitions installing grub just fails
Everything else is installed but Ubiquity (the installer) just quits at 94%
Oh I just see solved in the subject - nothing in the post itself reveals a solution....