Boot fails / goes straight to grub command line

Fair warning: this is gonna be the worst request for help ever, but I'm stranded with a phone and a busted laptop.
So, as the title suggests my laptop goes straight to the grub command line. Having never dealt with this, I'm not really sure how to go about debugging it.
Checking dmesg, I don't really see anything that says CATASTROPHIC FAILURE. Then again I don't really know if dmesg can catch this sort of error.
It's been a couple weeks since I used this laptop, but I don't think I upgraded or anything.
I tried mounting the fs and blindly reinstalling stuff like the kernel and systemd but no dice so far.
I can't post the actual logs right now but I might be able to later if I find an Ethernet cable.
I think I can probably figure it out myself if someone could just point me in the right direction i.e. what the general debugging process is for this scenario.
Again, I know this is the worst request for help ever, but if someone could help this damsel in distress it would be greatly appreciated.

Actually, your request for help is far from the worst I have ever seen. In fact, it is pretty good. You tell us the problem, the history, what you see, and what you have tried. Are you using Grub classic, or Grub 2 ?
Are you sure? Any chance you have updated in the last couple weeks? You may have upgraded to Grub 2 without having built a new configuration on the boot partition.
Also, are you in the regular shell or the rescue shell ? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Gr … mand_shell
Last edited by ewaller (2013-07-15 03:23:13)

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