[F9] laptop not booting - reinstall MBR?

[Don Levey]

Tim wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 15:41 -0400, Don Levey wrote:
>> But there is no separate /boot partition.  The /boot directory lives
>> in /.  I used to make a separate /boot partition, but was told a while
>> back (perhaps 2 years or so) that this was no longer necessary.
> 
> That *may* be your problem.  e.g. Up until now, all the files in
> the /boot directory that GRUB needed to read at start up were in
> locations that the BIOS could reach.  But over time, as files get
> written, modified, etc. (new kernels installed, grub.conf rewritten),
> the data has moved into areas that it can't.
> 
I don't think this is it.  I think there is something 
motherboard/controller related.  I tried a second hard drive, and 
couldn't boot from that either.  The times I tried fsck I uncovered no 
problems, all files seem to be where they should be, and everything else 
seems fine.  I may try to boot off of these drives in another machine 
today, just to re-confirm, but it looks like the machine is in need of 
major surgery or a burial.

  -Don