Well, the dog ate my first draft (timed out I think) so let me try again.

Some time back I used Rokytnji's first-rate HowTo and I put antiX on my 8 Gig Sandisk Cruser Micro jump-drive. Worked like a charm and a lot of fun to use!

My grandson has been curious about antiX so I decided to bring him the drive w/antiX as a little gift. I have not used it for a few weeks so I thought I ought to test it first.

To my great surprise it simply would not boot! I get a screen message telling me it is booting GRUB stage 1.5. Underneath that is a horizontal cursor and the system hangs. I am not far enough in to use the"e" or"g" keys to edit or get to a GRUB menu. There is nothing to do save to power down, remove the jump-drive and then come back up using the antiX livecd to have a look at the jump-drive. (I can boot just fine from my laptop HD and use one of the distros I have on there. I have preferred just to use the antiX live cd.)

So I now have reinstalled antiX on my jump-drive mutiple times, trying to be very careful to follow Rokytnji's script. No luck. Mepis has a very good set of GRUB repair tools. So I tried using the Mepis live cd to repair the jump-drive MBR and reinstall GRUB. I let it redo the GRUB directory with menu.lst as well.

No luck, it still hangs at exactly the same point in exactly the same way as it did initially.

So I must be making the same mistake over and over? I can read the jump-drive just fine, I cannot get it to boot. Can anybody make my Christmas merrier and tell me what the heck is going on? I surely would appreciate it! __{{emoticon}}__

Can you post the menu.lst on the jump drive?
Also, when the drive was formatted, did/does it have a boot sector?

OK, first lets post the menu.lst

_______________________________________________

timeout 10
color cyan/blue white/blue
foreground ffffff
background 0639a1

gfxmenu /boot/grub/message

title MEPIS at sdb1, newest kernel
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sdb1 nomce quiet splash vga=791
initrd /boot/initrd.img
boot

title MEPIS at sdb1, kernel 2.6.27-1-mepis-smp
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-1-mepis-smp root=/dev/sdb1 nomce quiet splash vga=791
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-1-mepis-smp
boot

title Ubuntu 9.10, kernel 2.6.31.16-generic
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-16-generic root=UUID=c9bf05ec-57d9-4468-8f77-7c914cd3d15d ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-16-generic

title linux
root (hd0,7)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=UUID=73206421-13ea-4049-9cfe-d2237134629d resume=UUID=033ff50b-41d1-4156-b57f-9a071561fd2e splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd0,7)/boot/initrd.img

title MEMTEST
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
_____________________________________________________

I seem to recall that, as with Rokytnji, I had to fool with the root address and change it from hd (1,0) to hd (0,0).

Now to the"boot sector." GParted shows the drive, formatted as a primary partition using ext2, has a"boot" flag. Now beyond that I do not know how to identify a boot sector"? My apologies! I have reformatted at least twice in search of a solution, doing so as I thought I did it the first time. How do I identify a"boot sector"?

Thanks for the help!

Thanks for trying to help anti, but we appear to have a physical hardware problem.

Update: It helps to have a family member who is both a software engineer and a sophisticated Linux person.

Conclusion: My 8 gig Sandisk Cruzer is corrupted and non-repairable. Solution is to go and buy another one!

Sandisk, WD and others tend to put Windows/Mac specific software on these sticks for"backup" purposes. I have been advised that it is prudent to first remove this stuff before using the jump-drive or external HD with Linux. (It will probably work if you do not, but it is safer to just remove the hidden partition if you can do so.) Visit the manufacturer's website and you probably will find a utility there that will do the job. I checked and Sandisk has such a routine.

Of course, you do need a Mac or Windows machine to run the utility!

mumble ... grumble ... maybe there is a new one in my Christmas stocking?