New Squeeze install fails to boot (not even to grub)
(posted this to a Linux forum, cross-posting here as recommended by the install guide troubleshooting instructions)
I recently purchased a new Lenovo Thinkpad T420i and am having problems
installing the latest version of Squeeze from CD. After receiving the
laptop, I started it up, configured Windows 7, and confirmed everything
is working correctly. Next I went through the Debian installer, which
completed successfully. I'll be dual-booting Windows 7 and Debian, so at
the partitioning stage I resized my NTFS partition, added a shared VFAT
partition, then used the "Guided" install to create my root and swap
partitions. My partition layout is:
/dev/sda1 NTFS, primary (small, not sure what Windows uses this for)
/dev/sda2 NTFS, primary (the main Windows one I resized)
/dev/sda3 NTFS, primary (the Lenovo recovery partition at the end of the drive)
/dev/sda4 extended
/dev/sda5 FAT32, logical (shared between Windows and Linux)
/dev/sda6 Linux, logical, bootable (Linux root)
/dev/sda7 Linux swap, logical
During the boot loader phase, I chose the default (install grub to MBR).
After the installation completed successfully and I rebooted, I get:
Intel Boot Agent
PXE-E61: media test failure
which I see means the drive could not be booted. It then drops me
back to a Boot Menu where I can select which device to boot, and
choosing my hard drive goes to a black screen for a few seconds, then
kicks me back to the Boot Menu.
I assumed something was wrong with grub, so I booted the CD into rescue
mode and chose to reinstall grub onto the Master Boot Record. But
nothing changed. Just to experiment, I went into fdisk, deleted all my
new partitions (leaving just the Windows ones), and tried rebooting, but
the same error happened. I then went through the Debian installer
again, being careful to set everything up correctly, but still, the
device won't boot.
I'm not even getting to the grub boot screen, so something is wrong even
before the point. Reinstalling grub to the Master Boot Record
(grub-install /dev/sda) isn't changing anything. How can I troubleshoot
this?
Thanks in advance.
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