Ubuntu: error: file '/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found


Question: error: file '/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found.
grub rescue＞
What can I do? I just sit and stare at it.
I found my old netbook (Dell Inspiron 1010) which I have not used for about
four years. I replaced Windows XP with Ubuntu 12.10. I used my bootable USB
drive. I installed and rebooted. I got the message that normal.mod is not
found.
What should I do? Type exit, reboot, or quit? Should I re-install?

Solutions Sample (Please watch the whole video to see all solutions, in order of how many people found them helpful):

== This solution helped 29 people ==
Solved this on a machine this afternoon. It seems that one cause of this
problem is the installer thinking that you have EFI secure boot, when you don't
and therefore loading the incorrect GRUB files.
What you need to do is install GRUB 2. To do this you need to boot to the live
instance, mount your root partition and install.
From a live instance, find the partition on which your root partition is
loaded. GParted will tell you this, or you could use
sudo fdisk -l
Go for the partition in which ubuntu is installed.
Once you have your partition you need to mount it. Assuming the root partition
is on /dev/sda5, that'd be:
sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
Then install GRUB 2
sudo grub-install /dev/sda --root-directory=/mnt [use copy and paste for this
one as there are some spaces that you need to get right.]
Assuming this is your problem, then you should just be able to reboot and
everything will work fine.
Original solution for this was from here: ubuntujournal.blogspot.com/
2012/11/fix-new-install-of-ubuntu-1210-wont-boot.html

== This solution helped 2 people ==
I didn't find that information on forums, so I want to share some information
despite the fact that this question was asked a long time ago:
If you have a large (e.g. 1TB) partition with Ubuntu installed and you didn't
allocate additional one for /boot/, it could be the reason of such errors. When
GRUB starts, it uses biosdisk driver for reading normal drivers from the /boot/
grub/ directory. Sometimes, this directory could be physically located on the
hard drive somewhere after the maximum supported by biosdisk sector. The issue
could appear, for example, after system upgrade. Also, I am always face that
issue after fresh installation Ubuntu 13.10, but it could differ, as it depends
on motherboard/bios.
You can check that using grub recovery - after setting correct PREFIX and ROOT,
try to ls /boot - if you don't see anything, but can see files there when
booting from live cd/flash drive - than you have the issue described above.
You can do different things to make system bootable, but the only way to avoid
that issue in future (during dist-upgrades) is to put /boot directory on a
separate small partition.

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