The grub menu appeared when the USB drive was connected to the laptop. Just in case someone else runs into this.... I was able to fix my the main boot record on my laptop (following suggestions on the IRC) as follows:
Insert the USB stick I made to get the grub menu, boot Windows Followed this procedure to allow Windows recovery console without admin password http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312149 rebooted with XP install CD enter recovery console run "fixmbr" I'm told there's an advanced option somewhere in the install to decide what drive to write the MBR for grub. I'm going to test this next, however... By default, I think that grub should write it's MBR to the drive you've just installed on, rather than picking some other random drive that's not involved in the install. I can understand that someone might want the mbr on a different drive from the boot / root filesystem, but I would think that would be the exception case to bury in the advanced menu. -- [karmic alpha 4] grub re-writes boot sector on wrong drive on mythbuntu install https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/414996 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
