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My machine was dual-booting with Windows XP and Fedora, then I tried to install Arch. While installation power went off.

After that, booting always results in the GRUB prompt. Even when I instruct my BIOS to boot from the DVD drive, it won't. So I unfortunately cannot boot into a Live CD, be it Linux, Windows or Super Grub Disk.

The solutions I found included looking with the find command from the GRUB prompt for /vmlinuz or stage1 to find the kernel and then direct GRUB to this kernel. But the find command always tells me it cannot find any of these keywords.

However, I was able to boot into Windows from the GRUB prompt following these instructions on linuxselfhelp.com ("Load another boot loader to boot unsupported operating systems").

How can I make my machine boot again as it used to? Any help appreciated. Please tell me what information you need.

Mrmfldmn
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    Have you tested booting to USB? – Sopalajo de Arrierez Apr 18 '14 at 01:31
  • Considering any alternatives, what about booting GRUB to ISO file? http://superuser.com/questions/154133/grub-boot-from-iso – Sopalajo de Arrierez Apr 18 '14 at 01:34
  • It's an old machine (Asus L3000D) where the USB port is not bootable. At least it does not appear on the list of bootable devices. - Thanks for the grub boot to ISO link, I'll have a look at that. – Mrmfldmn Apr 18 '14 at 07:32
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    The strange thing is the problem with booting to CD/DVD: that is not usual, at least if you were capable of booting before. If you could boot, I would suggest you to try PLoP: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16822/boot-from-a-usb-drive-even-if-your-bios-wont-let-you/ . With it your booting capabilities get increased. – Sopalajo de Arrierez Apr 18 '14 at 08:36
  • You're right, Sopalajo - not being able to boot from DVD is what is really strange. Now, I definitely could boot before, that's how I began to install Arch. But maybe my DVD drive broke incidentally? The BIOS shows it, also it is shown as drive D: in Windows, but it apparently does not read any medium. Thanks for the hint on PLoP, that sounds like a good idea. However, I've got to get hold of a floppy disk first before I can try that. – Mrmfldmn Apr 18 '14 at 10:55
  • hi, in the grub command line, type ls you will find many partitions like (hd0,xx), then type ls (hd0,xx)/ ( slash after the partition) and report the result please. – Baroudi Safwen Jun 24 '15 at 01:57
  • check this out http://superuser.com/questions/778948/stuck-on-grub-command-prompt-after-regular-kernel-update/931534#931534 – Baroudi Safwen Jun 24 '15 at 01:59

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Hi since you managed to get windows up and running, try easybcd to fix your boot problems it is free and easy to use.

Baroudi Safwen
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