Ubuntu - To skip hard drive check that caused System to not boot up

When booting up,
The following is observed again and again, endlessly.....There is potentially something wrong with the hard drive blocks. (bad-blocks maybe)

ata2.00: atatus: {DRDY}
ata2: soft resetting link
ata2.00: configured for UDMA/33
ata2:EH Complete

There is a work-around to skip the hard drive check so that the system will boot up

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Appending the following to the kernel boot options:

irqpoll noprobe=ata2

Resolution Issue - Ubuntu boot-up/shut-down without startup/shutdown splash screen

There is a simple 3 step process to solve this problem-

1. Type ’sudo gedit /etc/usplash.conf’

# Usplash configuration file
xres=1280
yres=1024

You have to change 1280 to 1024 in the x resolution and 1024 to 768 in the y resolution

2. Step 1 should solve the shut-down problem.To solve the start-up problem,you need to follow step2 and step3. Now edit /boot/grub/menu.lst by typing ’sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst’. In this file reach the line

## ## End Default Options ##

By default the next paragraph will have the boot information for the option you choose while booting up.It will say something like-

title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
root (hd0,9)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=ebddbc03-0e71-41dd-babd-278109f26a95 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic
quiet

At the end of the line next to kernel,next to splash add ‘vga=791′.791 is the code for 1024X768 resolution in 16 Bits.What this does is that it changes the screen resolution of all following steps but not of the xserver.You can select any other resolution which your monitor is comfortable with.
Here are some typical values for some screen resolutions-

Colours   640x400 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1152x864 1280x1024 1600x1200
--------+--------------------------------------------------------------
4 bits  |    ?       ?      770       ?        ?        ?         ?
8 bits  |   768     769     771      773      353      775       796
15 bits |    ?      784     787      790      354      793       797
16 bits |    ?      758     788      791      355      794       798
24 bits |    ?      786     789      792       ?       795       799
32 bits |    ?       ?       ?        ?       356       ?

3. The third step is a copy and paste step.In this step,you need to execute a command to update the settings and generate a new usplash image of the resolution you selected. Execute this command in a terminal window-

sudo update-initramfs -u -k `uname -r`

Reboot your computer now and I’m sure you’ll be able to see the orange Startup splash screen without any trouble now.

Overhead (Computer Science)

The processing time required by a device prior to the execution of a command