grub error 15 after hoary install

[skoal]

The only thing I would suggest is:

1. use a grub boot disk.  Maybe you could make one with your good
laptop grub installation.
2. If you don't know how to make one, does the Ubuntu install CD come
with a recovery mode?  I don't know.  
3. If not, if you have access to another good linux drive, boot from
that one and follow/modify the instructions I gave above for the other
drive (which would be the slave, hdb).

If you made a /boot partition as your first partition, you would -not-
need to prepend a /boot to /vmlinuz.  It's been awhile since I've
installed ubuntu and am doing this from memory, but I don't believe you
need to edit anything in your 'menu.lst'.  I may be wrong.

WRT Error 15:
I think you have several issues going on here.  One, if you installed
grub to the MBR of hda (for example), then it sets up pointers to find
the 'stage' files in the partition where your /boot partition is (hda1
in your case).  That should at least get you a grub menu (when you hit
ESC), whether or not your 'menu.lst' can be found (I believe).  The
error 15 should only occur -after- grub tries to run a menu entry.

I have heard of some funkiness with changing from lilo to grub, or vice
versa.  I can't remember which direction that is.  I apologize but I'm
doing this all from memory and the drive I was using ubuntu on went up
in smoke a while back.  I'll see what else I can find in the meantime.

Here's my partition information on -another- distro which might provide
some insight.  The syntax would be slightly different running Ubuntu of
course:
> 
> [skoal at morpheus ~]$ cat /proc/partitions 
> major minor  #blocks  name
> 
> 3     0    2564790 hda
> 3     1      62338 hda1
> 3     2     249952 hda2
> 3     3    2252407 hda3

and the relevant 'menu.lst'

> root   (hd0,0)
> kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/discs/disc0/part3 ro

That's a simple /boot (hda1), swap (hda2), and / (hda3) partition
scheme.  My 'menu.lst' root points to the /boot partition on hda
(hd0,0).  The kernel line says find the kernel in the root (/vmlinuz26)
of that partition and mount the root filesystem on hda3 (part3).


-- 
skoal