grub stage 1.5 error 5 problem

[Dave Stevens]

Hello all,

Recently I made some changes in my system in order to try a new
distribution I hope to be able to use on old small computers. After the
test I could no longer boot into FC3 on hda1. Grub starts up, gives a
stage 1.5 notice then displays error 5. This seems to be generated by
grub not being able to find a needed file. I am not sure what file or
what to do about this.

My system details:

athlon 1 gig 512 megs RAM
1 9.1 gig Seagate scsi drive, sda (sda1) with a bootable Morphix system
(Debian based, works ok) If I tell the BIOS to boot off SCSI this starts
up.
1 Samsung 40 gig IDE as hda (hda1, hda2). hda1 marked as bootable has
always worked ok before. Should be booting 2.6.9-1.667 which is where I
was. BIOS was set to boot from IDE-0.
1 LG CDRW/DVDRW at hdb
1 Samsung 60 gig IDE as hdc (hdc1) was mounted under /home, all user
data, all intact and accessible.
1 WD 1.6 gig IDE as hdd (hdd1) which was the test unit for the small
system.

the directory of / on hda1 shows:

root at athlon:/mnt # ls -al /mnt/hda1
total 13492
drwxr-xr-x    4 root     root         2048 Apr 11 11:09 .
drwxr-xr-x    8 root     root         4096 Apr 11 11:56 ..
-rw-r--r--    2 root     root       714266 Apr 11 11:02 System.map
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       239593 May  8  2004
System.map-2.6.5-1.358
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       237792 Jul  1  2004
System.map-2.6.6-1.435.2.3
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       242782 Aug  3  2004
System.map-2.6.7-1.494.2.2
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       245557 Aug 14  2004
System.map-2.6.8-1.520
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       245203 Aug 16  2004
System.map-2.6.8-1.521
-rw-r--r--    2 root     root       714266 Apr 11 11:02
System.map.new-2.6.9-1.667
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        46375 May  8  2004
config-2.6.5-1.358
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        46437 Jul  1  2004
config-2.6.6-1.435.2.3
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        49658 Aug  3  2004
config-2.6.7-1.494.2.2
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        49763 Aug 14  2004
config-2.6.8-1.520
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        49728 Aug 16  2004
config-2.6.8-1.521
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        50929 Nov  3 01:23
config-2.6.9-1.667
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         1024 Dec 25 04:58 grub
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       318303 Jul  9  2004
initrd-2.6.5-1.358.img
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       316663 Jul 30  2004
initrd-2.6.6-1.435.2.3.img
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       329942 Aug  5  2004
initrd-2.6.7-1.494.2.2.img
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       330626 Aug 17  2004
initrd-2.6.8-1.520.img
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       330264 Aug 20  2004
initrd-2.6.8-1.521.img
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       530103 Dec 25 04:55
initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          549 Dec 18  2003 kernel.h
drwx------    2 root     root        12288 Dec 18  2003 lost+found
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       714266 Nov  3 01:23 s.m
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      1199031 May  8  2004
vmlinuz-2.6.5-1.358
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      1203835 Jul  1  2004
vmlinuz-2.6.6-1.435.2.3
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      1360550 Aug  3  2004
vmlinuz-2.6.7-1.494.2.2
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      1362562 Aug 14  2004
vmlinuz-2.6.8-1.520
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      1360057 Aug 16  2004
vmlinuz-2.6.8-1.521
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      1405861 Nov  3 01:23
vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667
root at athlon:/mnt #

I don't know where to go. I have been reading the GRUB manual but it is
substantial and I have already tried what seems to me to be likely to
not cause further problems and wiould prefer to have advice before doing
anything likely to lead to data loss (of course k3b, my usual backup
method) is not curently available.)

TIA,

Dave