Alternative booting

[Chris Jones]

> BIOS is not the problem as I was able to successfully boot several times
> with the exact same BIOS without any problems.

This proves nothing.

The fact that you can boot a few times straight after a fresh install, 
*before* any updates only proves that during the initial install the contents 
of /boot are created at a point that 'just happens', through luck, to place 
them on disk at a position your bios can read.

The fact that subsequent updates result in booting failure, are consistent 
with the updates (in /boot/) are being written to a place your bios cannot 
access, for whatever reason. This is because if /boot is just a regular 
folder, the system is free to write files in that folder to whereever the 
hell it likes on the disk, within the partition for / - if / happens to span 
to regions outside those your bios can read, you are basically play Russian 
roulette with your boot files. There is a finite probably any file will or 
won't be written to a place your bios, and thus grub, can read.

Chris