[lug] How to recover after installing Broken Grub?

[siegfried]

Thanks Dave!

>Seems like you're using LVM (grub doesn't boot LVM partitions).  But
>it looks like grub loaded the kernel, the initrd ran, and failed to
>mount the root partition.
>

Are you sure? I thought that I had used grub with LVM before. I'm thinking
the problem could be that GRUB does not like encrypted partitions (a feature
I decided to try out for the first time).

Anyway, I installed Debian Etch again expecting it to prompt me for LVM and
volume encryption options. It did not! This time, however, something was
different because it would boot debian but not windows (or so I thought). I
finally discovered that GRUB would boot windows because the video card
requires a non-standard cable (59 pins) or in my case a dongle. And my
dongle has a broken green wire (I just get red and blue on the monitor). I
could not see the other options for booting GRUB! I just need to hit the
down arrow key to see the GRUB menu options for booting windows! Hurray --
the company machine is working!

I'm disappointed that GRUB requires my new extra external USB drive to be
turned on to boot windows. Is there anyway to mitigate this additional
constraint? If I restore the windows MBR, will I be able to boot debian?
Presently, when I change the BIOS boot order to boot from USB devices first,
it dies! This does not seem correct! Should I be able to boot from my new
external USB directly? Are there some other BIOS settings I can fiddle with?

Thanks,
Siegfried