disk read errors on Dell Optiplex GX1 on Debian (Sid)

[obmontoy]

I'm trying to install GRUB from Debian Unstable on a Dell OptiPlex
GX1, and am having persistent Disk Read Errors (25).  Can anyone help?

I don't have these errors if I run grub from the command line on my
booted system, but in that event running 'setup (hd0)' runs without
complaint but my system still doesn't boot.

When I boot from a grub floppy, <TAB> completion only gets me as far
as "(hd0," and so when typing the rest of it "0)" I'm on my own, and I
know grub can't see it.

If I impatiently hit tab several times, the system seems to freeze and
I end up CTRL-ALT-DELETEing.  It also does this freeze if I try to
"find" files.

I don't know whether this disk read error has to do with my BIOS
(probably not), my partition map (probably), or what.  I've never
successfully gotten LILO running on this machine: I've always booted
from a kernel floppy, but I'm really starting to hate that.

I've tried putting it on both the MBR and an individual partition,
but clearly grub isn't seeing even that far.

Here's fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/hda: 6448 MB, 6448619520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 784 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *         1       261   2096451   83  Linux
/dev/hda2           262       783   4192965    5  Extended
/dev/hda5           523       767   1967931   83  Linux
/dev/hda6           768       783    128488+  82  Linux swap
/dev/hda7           262       327    530113+  83  Linux
/dev/hda8           328       522   1566306   83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/hdb: 20.0 GB, 20020396032 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38792 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1             1     10159   5120104+  83  Linux
/dev/hdb2         10160     38792  14431032    f  Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb5         10160     11987    921280+  83  Linux
/dev/hdb6         20318     30476   5120104+  83  Linux
/dev/hdb7         30477     38792   4191232+  83  Linux
/dev/hdb8         11988     13816    921784+  83  Linux
/dev/hdb9         13817     20317   3276472+  83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Looking through archives and Google I thought to wonder whether LBA
issues were involved, but I don't know how I would determine this.
The fact that my hda2 is "Extended" while my hdb2 is "Win95 Ext'd
(LBA)" might indicate something in that direction, but neither (hd0)
nor (hd1) can be read by grub (apart from seeing that they exist).

The other thing I could think of is the "Partition table entries are
not in disk order".  I moved everything off of hda and repartitioned
so that the entries would be in disk order (and so that the slate
would be clean), but after running mkfs.ext3 on all of the new
partitions of hda, it still doesn't recognize the partitions.

I've successfully set up grub on other, more current Dells as recently
as today, and I've never had a problem like this before.  Again, I've
also never managed to use LILO successfully on this machine, so I know
this isn't exclusively a grub problem, but I'd much rather solve it
with grub.

Thanks,

O.