this problem is HUGE you better have strong kung-fu

alyoko

Member
ok, so really i have no idea where to begin!

the computer i was trying to fix was my wife's old OLD dynabook v1.456crc it's about 10 years old!!! it originally came with windows ME in JAPANESE. the OS became corrupted and was not able to use windows media player to watch some downloaded japanese animation. i figured, with old specs of 65MHz and 64MB RAM and 20BD HDD, i would just install Xubuntu 9.04. i used DBAN and wiped the drive clean for a fresh install. well it installed fine BUT got hung up on the grub. this PARTICULAR toshiba won't let you change the boot order in the BIOS. you have to be in windows ME and use dedicated software. so i figured i could pull out the HDD and use a ATA Ultra to USB adapter and reformat and re-install and my toubles would be GONE.....NOPE nothing i try works, it just ALWAYS hangs at the Xubuntu grub 1.5. so at this point i figured the problem is the MBR, it been written over. NOW i have no way of correcting the MBR of a laptop hard drive through a IDE/SATA/ATA to USB converter of a 10 year old laptop.

i think, the EASIEST fix is to buy another HDD but sure would like to fix this WITHOUT costing too much (as this is OLD, we have other computers, and new laptops are like 300 bucks)
thanks in advance for at least reading my story and not laughing too hard, hope I was entertaining !

please comment if you need some clarification or want me to try something

Addendum:

typo 650MHz, 64MB ram, 20GB hdd
 
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Flash on the latest version for your BIOS if you can find it. As long as you only got one drive in the system and no floppies/CD's are inserted it should be booting from the hard drive regardless of order.
 
not sure if i was clear in my description, to change the boot order from hdd to cdrom, i have to have windows ME working. toshiba has a utility software that once inside a working windows OS, THEN you can change boot order.
Ubuntu's unloader, GRUB wrote over top of the windows MBR. now i'm completely f*ked. i think my only choices are to physically remove the hard drive and download ubuntu so it can complete the unloader's operation OR replace the hard drive and re-install the japanese windows ME.
 
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