GRUB loading, please wait...Error 18

1234543212345 · 12 Jan 2010 at 20:08

I have recently installed ubuntu on a old desktop pc but i think the harddrive i've put it in (250gb) is too big for the bios to reconise it properly.

the error i get is:
Verifying DMI pool data.......
Boot from atapi cd-rom:not found...
Grub loading stage1.5.

grub loading, please wait...
error 18

First time i try to install from disk, everything works perfectly then at the end when i restart it restarts and i get this error.

how would i perform a bios upgrade? and/or fix this problem

celliott · 12 Jan 2010 at 21:09

I've seen this before on old PC's where the hard disk is bigger than the size the bios supports.

See if there is a jumper to limit the size / install a smaller disk.

1234543212345 · 12 Jan 2010 at 21:32

Now all i get when i try to install/try/check disc for defects is:

crc error

-- system halted

i changed the boot order to boot from hdd first and now i can't get it to show setup any help?

celliott · 16 Jan 2010 at 19:56

If the disk is ok then run memtest over the ram as somehow data is getting corrupted on there.

.Simon · 18 Jan 2010 at 05:18

From Gentoo GRUB Error Collection (still relevant):

This error is returned when a read is attempted at a linear block address beyond the end of the BIOS translated area. This generally happens if your disk is larger than the BIOS can handle (512MB for (E)IDE disks on older machines or larger than 8GB in general).

Try an update for your BIOS and/or move your boot partition to the front (or at least into the appropriate range).

This is why I use LILO. You should try and create a seperate /boot partition (around 500 megabytes in my opinion) at the start of the drive during installation.

1234543212345 · 24 Jan 2010 at 16:45

Thanks for the help, i put a 40gb harddrive in and it still didn't work, then after reading around on the internet and doing various things to it, it now works perfectly, i'm not fully sure on how i fixed it but it works now.