not a valid root and flash disks

[Pinan]

Just tried to fire upmy version of gentoo, when through grub, and received a 'not a valid root'

Tried every trick that I knew, managed to boot up on the install disk, every thing checked out, valid devices, etc. No corrupted file systems, etc. I even booted up in to windows just tocheck things out, no problems there.

So as far as I can make out, hardware is ok, software as far as I check it is ok, checked out grub.conf looked valid, but still a 'not a valid root' error. I put the computer down reached for my notes on how to install gentool, noticed a flash drive attached to the computers arse, remove it. Put the computer down, got my notice and discoverd that it now boot in to gentoo.

I tried booting the machine with the flash drive attached, again 'not a valid root' error.

SO having the flash drive atached seems to get the boot process confused, I have repeated the same sequance with windoz, it booted correctly.

I am running the a generic installed by the cd, I hav'nt had the time to clean out all the unused devices yet. The machine is a toshiba g30-116, the software kernel build is 2.6.16-gentoo-r3.

I hav'nt been able to find an error report on this, I almost reinstalled gentoo because of this. Does anybody have any suggestions on this problem

[Darknight]

Your system seems to be able to boot off a flash device. This in turn could cause grub to detect your flash drive and change the sequence of devices (hd0 becoming hd1 etc). This will lead to your problem, where the usually correct grub.conf does not work anymore. Try to have a look at the devices when you are in grub, entering its console instead of booting with the menu, you may see what I mean.