GRUB loading, Error 21 on Windows 7

I installed Linux on a flash drive and after booting my computer, I encountered an error:

GRUB Loading Stage 1.5.
GRUB loading, please wait...
Error 21

From what I read, this means that I can no longer boot windows normally without having the flash drive plugged in because my Windows MBR was corrupted by the installation of GRUB Stage 1. Anyway, a great explanation of this mess can be read here (start at the second paragraph).

MBR can be easily repaired with the Windows recovery disc, which I don't have but I did find an easy solution which worked well for me.

Volume slider keeps going down

A strange thing happened to my volume slider - it kept sliding down to 0 by itself.

In my case, the solution was quite simple. My keyboard has media keys and it turned out that the volume down key was jammed. If you encounter this same problem, I hope it's just because of your volume control keys as well. I came across posts in forums whose problem lies in the soundcard or other complicated stuff.

Computer restarts after hibernating

Just a quick tip here. Whenever I run into the problem of having my computer restart instead of hibernating, it is usually because of plugging in a new device -- most often, a mouse.

If this is your case, you can try the following solution.