GRUB won't initiate

[Irishguy]

Hello all.

I'm setting up a home network to do some penetration testing. I'm going to school for Info sec and wanted to get some hands on experience with some of the awesome tools in BT (legally too! ).

I found a peach of a XPS for my pen testing computer (desktop). I took out the hard drive, wiped it and reformatted it under ext3.

I put Backtrack 5 Gnome on a USB. It booted from USB just fine. I installed it, and it seemed to go ok, but the problem I'm having is that when restarting it, the GRUB loader won't come up. It just sits there, doing nothing. I went back into install and confirmed that it did install it on the disk.

I'm a novice at Linux but am slowly self teaching myself, hence the operator error issue here. Is there any way I can run a shell from the USB to install or update GRUB on the HD? Or am I missing something critical?

I hope I put enough information in here. If not let me know.

Thank you so much for your time.

v/r,

Dylan

***EDIT - After doing some further research I realize now it's the MBR - it doesn't exist...Trying to figure out how to reinstall / repair it from USB shell commands...

[maverik35]

BT5 should have a BT4 File system..Although it shoul work in theory with ext3, since GRUB 2 can handle those partitions..I would highly recommend to re-create (delete and install again) the partition with ext4. Then the swap partition (1gb).

Reinstall BT5r3.....If problem still showing, burn a DVD live, boot from it and recover grub..It should do it...But again, use ext4 filesystem.

Any other issue or doubt, please let us know to keep helping...We are here to help..

Luck...

[Irishguy]

BT5 should have a BT4 File system..Although it shoul work in theory with ext3, since GRUB 2 can handle those partitions..I would highly recommend to re-create (delete and install again) the partition with ext4. Then the swap partition (1gb).

Reinstall BT5r3.....If problem still showing, burn a DVD live, boot from it and recover grub..It should do it...But again, use ext4 filesystem.

Any other issue or doubt, please let us know to keep helping...We are here to help..

Luck...

Thank you very much maverik, I followed your advice (using ext4 instead) and it worked. Again, thank you!