[NBLUG/talk] Help with Grub2

[Peter Lutz]

I'm trying to multi-boot a machine with three disks holding Ubuntu
14.04, 12.04 and Windows Vista.  Each disk will boot and run fine if
it's the only disk in the machine.  When I plug all three in, I can
boot off each disk if I set it as first in the BIOS.  When I set to
boot of the disk I want to run as the primary. I can only boot that
disk.  I've run grub-install /dev/sdb    and     update grub several
times to no avail.  The best I can get is   error: no such device
UUID=xxxx....  The other system just reboots.

I have several other multi-boot machines that all work fine, one with
a dozen systems on it.  The strange thing I notice about the problem
machine is that synaptic shows grub-common, grub-pc-bin, grub-pc,
grub2-common and grub-gfxpayload-lists all installed but
dpkg-query -l grub*    shows NO grub packages installed.  The other
machines all agree between synaptic and dpkg-query that all five
packages are installed.

The question:  Can I use synaptic to un-install the five grub
packages and then re-install them without loosing the machine
completely?  I don't care whether it takes apt-get or synaptic
to re-install.  Does any one have any idea if this will help?

I did loose booting once while working on the machine and used
my Boot Repair disk to get it going again.  Could this have messed
things up?

Thanks for any help.

Peter
-- 
Peter Lutz  AA6AV
Meaning is Homemade.
www.p-lutz.net