Grub Rescue

I went ahead and let Muon install ntfs-config, and it also appears to have been successful. I ran it and it produced a window with some options, which I was going to ask you about, but as soon as I went to Firefox to post, that window disappeared, so I can't make a screenshot of it.

EDIT: Got the screenshot:


What should I do with it?

Well during installing upgrades its supposed to do that to prevent errors.
Kind of a good thing actually.
As for installing updates the muon software updater is another application in the muon software family , Muon is actually an entire software suite of software installers so it has different interfaces to do certain things.
You can actually install upgrades in the primary Muon package manager as well do it in the Muon software update manager

This here explains a bit:

http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/?content=137507

As for applications not appearing in the task manager after minimization again this may be a hiccup caused by your upgrade from Kubuntu 13.04 to 13.10

open up your file manager (its called dolphin, its in your menu) and in there just hit the alt and the . button at the same time.
There are hidden folders in your main directory (called home, its like your users folder in windows)
in here there are hidden configuration files and the one you need to find is labeled .kde (the . folders are configuration folders)
you need to delete that folder, odd thing to do but sometimes when updating KDE it will hiccup.
you may have KDE complain at you, dont worry ignore and just bypass it by hitting "ok"
Your issue is a little common when jumping from one version of KDE to another, the one in Kubuntu 13.10 is KDE 4.11.2 while the one Kubuntu 13.04 had was 4.10.2
When doing tiny updates to KDE its un noticable but when you do a major version jump KDE has this bad tendency to it.
Luckily thats ending as KDE has mostly stabilized now

Even though the Kubuntu version update appeared to be successful, I would like to confirm that it really was. How do I check what the current version actually is?

Home/KDE deleted.

seekermeister said:

Even though the Kubuntu version update appeared to be successful, I would like to confirm that it really was. How do I check what the current version actually is?

Click to expand...

There is one method, just open a terminal and copy and paste this command:
cat /etc/lsb-release

as for what to do with NTFS config, well you do have a lot of drives do you... wow.
the sheer around of drives and labels you have it may take a while to rule out the offending drive.
you may want to just make sure they are all checked off for now and just see what one causes the issue one by one.
A pain to do with your setup but its one of the few tools I know to mount NTFS drives and configure them.

Okay, 13.10 confirmed. Before doing anything with NTFS config, I want to verify that it won't actually touch any of those drives themselves. Any changes made will be isolated to Kubuntu...yes?

When a drive is unchecked, does that mean that Kubuntu won't mount it, and I won't have any access to it? What about the Auto Configure button...what would it do?

EDIT: There are only 6 drives (actually only 5 in the list, because one is Kubuntu...not NTFS), two of them being external. The list not only contains drives but also the individual partitions on them. Would it be correct to assume that when unchecking a drive, that all partitions on it should also be unchecked?

seekermeister said:

Okay, 13.10 confirmed. Before doing anything with NTFS config, I want to verify that it won't actually touch any of those drives themselves. Any changes made will be isolated to Kubuntu...yes?

When a drive is unchecked, does that mean that Kubuntu won't mount it, and I won't have any access to it? What about the Auto Configure button...what would it do?

Click to expand...

Yeah the NTFS config tool is just for Kubuntu, it only allows it to read/write NTFS partitions and wont erase them (its not a partitioning tool)
the auto configure button does exactly what it says on the tin, it automatically configures drives to mount for you.
and yeah when a drive is unchecked it means Kubuntu wont mount it during boot.
Thats why I said this may be a tedious process, by default Kubuntu scans the system its probably trying to mount your windows drives as it boots up. (thus is probably the root of your issue) the NTFS tool is for added configuration as while it can read NTFS drives Kubuntu cant write to NTFS and the NTFS config tool allows it to write to those drives and configure them.
So its just a matter of unchecking all the drives, but leaving one checked.
You can tell Kubuntu what drives you want it to mount during bootup this way.

I unchecked some of the extraneous partitions and hit the OK button. It indicated a process being run, then it displayed the window in the screenshot:



I keep running into the same problem with Windows that can't be closed. I was able to close it, after closing NTFS-config, but when I reopened it, it no longer listed the unchecked partitions at all, so I don't know if anything disabled could be re-enabled?

seekermeister said:

I unchecked some of the extraneous partitions and hit the OK button. It indicated a process being run, then it displayed the window in the screenshot:

View attachment 25694

I keep running into the same problem with Windows that can't be closed. I was able to close it, after closing NTFS-config, but when I reopened it, it no longer listed the unchecked partitions at all, so I don't know if anything disabled could be re-enabled?

Click to expand...

This here relates to the bug i mentioned concerning NTFS-config.
Before doing anything further now that you removed the .kde folder log out and log back in again and see if your task manager issue is fixed.

Maybe that the explanation for the question I was about to ask, because I did a restart, and when reaching desktop it appears to have gone back to it's default settings, no longer showing the wallpaper that I had chosen. I don't yet know what other changes it may have undone, but one good thing is that running apps do now appear on the Taskbar.

Going back to the other part of the last question, once disabled, will I be able to re-enable drives and partitions?

EDIT: Yes, deleting the KDE folder seems to have undone all of the setting that I had previously made, but at the same time it did fix some problems. Inow have a Desktop Window (don't really like it as much as being able to use the entire desktop to display files, like in Windows), but it is better than nothing. I also now have a taskbar on my secondary monitor, which wasn't there before.

Yes, the ntfs-config tool will be able to re enable your drives.
And yeah getting rid of the .kde folder sets kde back to its defaults, I know that sucks but meh its a lot better now then it was before.
KDE used to have quite a number of issues, but they are gone.
I dont think you will face the same issue going from Kubuntu 13.10 to 14.04 as KDE 4.11 is supposed to be a long term release and any incremental updates you get now and between the next few months you should not have as drastic as an issue.
KDE is better when you increment its updates thus why you had your issues.

14.04! There's another update available already?

EDIT: I just Googled it and found that it is available for download, but I think that I'll wait until Kubuntu itself notifies me of the update. Muon still says that everything is up to date.

seekermeister said:

14.04! There's another update available already?

Click to expand...

dont worry the full version of it wont come out till April.
Ubuntu and its spin offs (like Kubuntu) have a 6 month release cycle.
This is how Ubuntu does things you see, every six months there is a new version of it.
the next major version of it will come in April, but there will be one thing that is special about the next release which you may consider.
You see Ubuntu has something called a long term support (LTS) release where that version is supported for five years. (this trickles down to the spin offs like Kubuntu)
The current LTS is 12.04 and it will be supported until 2017, there are advantages and disadvantages to LTS releases.
LTS means it will have longer support yes, but you may not get the latest and greatest software (unless you use third party repositories)
The next release will be LTS and will be supported til 2019
13.10 is an incremental release, they are only supported 9 months.
This is both a good and a bad thing, on one hand you get more up to date software but on the other it wont be supported nearly as long.

Edit: yes 14.04 has an early pre alpha, not even worth your time, stick with what you got for now.

As long as things worked the way that they should, I couldn't care less about having the latest and greatest packages, etc. I think that I will look forward to April.

I went ahead and disabled the rest of the drives in NTFS-config, and then rebooted. I was alarmed that it stalled on the first screen of the BIOS run, while detecting drives. I had to wait over a minute for it to proceed, but when it started booting Kubuntu, it still dropped to shell again. Therefore, I'm guessing that the problem is not related to NTFS configuration, but then when I re-opened NTFS, while it doesn't list the drives, it does list the partitions that I had disabled previously.

It is possible that this problem has to do with one of the drives itself, because of the detection delay, but then I had not experienced that until the last use of NTFS-config, disabling the drives. While it doesn't change the drives themselves, does it change anything in the BIOS?

EDIT: I think I'm going to drop out of Kubuntu for a while, because I want to do some diagnostics on the system, and I know the diagnostics I have available in Windows far, far better than I do in Kubuntu.

I now have HD Tune running diagnostic on the Kubuntu drive, and the initial benchmark wasn't too good, so I'm now running an error scan on it. During the BIOS detection, most of the delay was on SATA3-1, but I'm not certain as to how that relates to the way that Disk Managment numbers them, because it starts at disk 0 instead of 1. Kubuntu is installed on disk 1 according to Disk Management, so I'm waiting to see how the scan turns out.

Do you know how to correlate the drive numbers as given in the BIOS versus as in Windows or Kubuntu?

I'm now pretty sure that the Kubuntu drive is the problem, because HD Tune's Health tab says that it failed the Run Out Cancel line and recommended replacing the drive. I'm still letting the error scan continue though. Guess I will have to install Kubuntu on one of my newer drives, but before I do, I will update the USB drive to 13.10. I see no point in having to update the system after install, if possible.

seekermeister said:

I went ahead and disabled the rest of the drives in NTFS-config, and then rebooted. I was alarmed that it stalled on the first screen of the BIOS run, while detecting drives. I had to wait over a minute for it to proceed, but when it started booting Kubuntu, it still dropped to shell again. Therefore, I'm guessing that the problem is not related to NTFS configuration, but then when I re-opened NTFS, while it doesn't list the drives, it does list the partitions that I had disabled previously.

Click to expand...

Yeah that is a bit odd, it may be related to your dist upgrade from 13.04 to 13.10

seekermeister said:

I now have HD Tune running diagnostic on the Kubuntu drive, and the initial benchmark wasn't too good, so I'm now running an error scan on it. During the BIOS detection, most of the delay was on SATA3-1, but I'm not certain as to how that relates to the way that Disk Managment numbers them, because it starts at disk 0 instead of 1. Kubuntu is installed on disk 1 according to Disk Management, so I'm waiting to see how the scan turns out.

Do you know how to correlate the drive numbers as given in the BIOS versus as in Windows or Kubuntu?

Click to expand...

HD Tune is mainly tuned for windows, not Kubuntu.or other linuxes
I would ignore its results on hard drive health

As for drive numbers in Kubuntu vs windows there is a lot of things to consider here.
Windows labels drives via the alphabet, A and B drives are reserved for floppies (snicker, floppies, LOL!)
C is reserved for the primary partition and other drive letters are reseved for things like USB drives, DVD drives and the like.
Linux on the other hand has a different method.
the first drive its installed on is usually referred to as SDA or SCSI drive A, sure SCSI drives are just as dead as floppies but the moniker SD a catchall for all unix based OS drives. (even linux which is unix like)
I usually see linux install in SDA6 or 5, its rarely a SDA1
The drives in linux are numbered and not really numbered.
I will get to your other issues here soon but I am eating right now, so keep an eye on this topic for edits.

Edit:
Okay done eating, sorry for all the late replies here as i was making dinner and eating, hey I am one person here who is trying to help you and a guys gotta eat.
Anyhow like i said I would not trust HD Tune to test the Kubuntu drive, the drive could be perfectly fine and HD Tune as I meantioned is probably made for windows and is not good at testing non windows drives.
There are tools in linux to test the drives, I would use them as they are made for linux.
There is gnome disk utility and badblocks, one is a gui and one is a command line one.
guess what one I reccomend you install
Gnome disk utility is a tool mainly for gnome so if it sticks out like a sore thumb where there you go.
You can use any tool/app/ whatever made for Ubuntu in kubuntu and vice versa.

I can understand that there are incompatibilities between Windows apps and Linux apps, but HD Tune is reading the drive itself, not the installation on it. Also, I didn't say that Kubuntu is on SDA1, but on SATA3-1 in the BIOS, and on disk 1 in Windows Disk Management.

Still, it wouldn't hurt to cross-check it in Kubuntu also. I guess that since you know my distaste for command line and the mention of Gnome, it is the Gnome Disk Utility that you are recommending. Each time I boot to Kubuntu, the amount of time before I can exit the shell, and get to desktop gets longer. It seems to be waiting for something to occur in the Kubuntu drive, because no matter how many times I enter the exit command, it won't happen until I wait a minute or so and hear a little bit of hard drive activity. This also leads me to think that it is the Kubuntu drive that is not responding as quickly as it should.

BTW, I hope you enjoyed you dinner.

If I do determine that the Kubuntu drive is the problem, I'm wondering if there is a way for me to clone it to another drive, instead of starting over from scratch?