Maybe you should tell us more about your setup and why you are getting these
notices. How many drives? How many partitions? How many OSes? Did you
install anything since you installed Ubuntu and have you removed any
devices? The more info you provide, the quicker we generally reach a
solution.

BTW, read the help documentation on Grub2 and it tells you how to re-write
grub from the Live CD. You want section 11 in the right hand menu.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2

I am running a Pent 4 at 2.66Ghz, 512 mbs of ram, 2 HD one 40 Gig with windows
xp pro, one 80 gig external hd that is just Ubuntu from a USB port. I install
from a CD from Canonical. I have not removed/or added any software or hardware
from either system, except open office on the xp drive and that was after I
installed 9.10.
Actually I am thinking about just letting it stay this way as another log-in
feature. If you see it and not sure what to do, could make it look like the
system is broke.

So where exactly is your Grub installed to? From the behaviour you
described, I'm guessing it is installed on the external hard drive. Which
means if you unplug the drive you are left with an unbootable system? I
don't know if this is a security feature I would want. There are two
options to make a bootable pen drive with Ubuntu, and maybe one of thos are
the way to go to boot to an external HD. Also, this site apears to include
the proper procedure to make a full install of Ubuntu to external HD.

www.pendrivelinux.com/.../

For all of these options, it is not a true dual boot. Your prefered OS is
based on the boot options in your BIOS. You will either set preference to
boot from HD or boot from USB. Selecting the non-default OS to boot is as
simple as entering the BIOS boot menu when you first turn your PC on.

btw, if you have the space on your board, you can get an internal HD at 40GB
from newegg.com for around 30-40 bucks... may be worth looking into. The
good thing about the external HD is that you could just take it with you and
use it from any PC though.

Oh, right; 9.1 doesn't have the option on system/preferences to unmount
drives anymore.

just use "sudo fdisk -l" to see listed/available partitions and then I
believe it is "sudo unmount /dev/sdx1" to make sure your internal hardrive
is unmounted. Substitute the "x" for a,b, etc... whatever that drive is
called, and replace the 1 with appropriate numbers of the various partitions
that may show up..

I did install 9.10 on the external drive but the way I understood when
installed it would install on my internal drive in the mbr.
I had a similar setup on another computer and it not take as long to bring up my
options. Right now it takes about 4 mins for grub to bring up my selections. Not
a life time, but would like a quicker startup.

Have you added or removed any drive, usb flash drive etc.? Did you install
grub in it's default location? Any other changes of hardware when it started
acting up? Is your BIOS set to boot from the drive which contains the grub
bootloader?