i am very new to linux but i wanted to try it out, my main windows drive is tiny so i decided to format my usb hard drive and use that, first i tried to install ubuntu but i got a normal.mod not found error, so after some reserch and a grub reinstallation it booted once,

the next day however i got another error so i decided to switch to mint to see if it would work any better, but i'm still getting the normal.mod not found error.

i've tried a whole bunch of things like reinstalling mint and grub, boot repair, but nothing works, i'm kinda frustrated because i know it works because it booted up before but i just can't figure out how to fix it.

Does your BIOS recognise your external drive?
Is it set to boot from the external drive?

It would be a lot easier for someone to help you if you made a note of what 'another error' was and posted it.
Some info on your hardware as well as what version of windows you are using would be useful.

well i think it just went to the grub menu but said i hadn't loaded the kernal or something, as for hardware i have an asus motherboard with an intel quad core cpu, 8 gigs of ram and a gtx 440 graphics card, as for windows there was never an operating system on it, its an external hard drive.

my bios is set to first boot from my dvd drive, and then my usb drive

I was actually referring to the computer and all drives not just what is or is not on the external drive or was on the external drive. If your computer is using windows 8, there are a number of other factors.

all my other drives are unplugged because there basically full, that and i didn't want to accidentally erase one when installing linux cause i have years worth of work on them. i have windows 7 on my main internal drive but it only has like 10gb's of space left and it's slow enough as it is

Is there possibly some reason your USB drive is booting each time with different parameters? This would be one reason Grub can't find it.

i'm not really sure how to find out, i mean its possible i'm not even installing grub to the right mount, the one i mounted to had boot written next to it so i just assumed it was the right one

You could boot from DVD and use this to explore the contents of the USB drive - plug the USB drive in after booting from the DVD.

ok, i'll try that, anything specific i should look for?

Do you still have Mint on the external drive?
When you get the "normal.mod" error, is it preceded by something like this: error: file '/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found


or does it say '/boot/grub/normal.mode' If you could reboot and copy down the exact message it should help.
With only the external drive on which you have Mint attached, boot the installation medium and run this command: sudo fdisk -l(Lower Case Letter L in the command) and post the output here. If you have Mint on one partition, you could mount that partition from the installation medium and take a look at the /boot/grub directory and sub-directory (if there is one) and see if there is a normal.mod file there. Also take a look at the grub.cfg file which might be in /boot/grub or /boot/grub/i386.

Are you using regular BIOS or GPT?

Check that your top level directory has a /boot sub-directory and that /boot has a /grub sub-directory.
/boot/grub should have 200+ items
In particular there should be a normal.mod file in /boot/grub

If it's missing or incomplete, you will need to re-install grub.

error: file '/boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found.
entering rescue mode...
grub rescue> _

thats what it says exactly

as for the drive its self it says theres a file called normal.mod in i386-pc

i'll try that command and post back what it says

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107859968 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773164 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000e0a5f

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 959995903 479996928 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 959997950 976771071 8386561 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 959997952 976771071 8386560 82 Linux swap / Solaris

there we go

My normal.mod file is located at and I am using mint...
I don't have any architecture dependent directories (such as i-386) on my machine.
I'm not saying this makes your config wrong though!!!

BTW I'm using a "legacy boot" configuration - not a UEFI boot configuration.

Since you say it worked for one boot, did anything happen that issued warnings or errors?