cannot log-in after dual-boot installation

[vamunar]

i have a problem that i cannot solve because i am a newbie to linux. i have had a satellite m70 toshiba laptop and i installed linux mint 10 in it. i have used it for months and it was working great. until a few hours ago i decided to try out the new ubuntu 11.04. i installed it to dualboot with linux mint 10. i resized the disk to increase the disk for ubuntu but what i forgot is that linux has only 17 gb left of memory before installation and that i partitioned ubuntu to use 25 gb. after playing around with ubuntu i decided to go reboot and log in to mint. but when the log-in screen appeared this error came out


" Installation problem! The configuration default for Gnome Power Manager have not been installed correctly. Pls contact your computer administrator "

i tried to log-in and it just showed a black screen and went back to the log-in screen with the same message. it just comes back to the same log-in screen everytime i try to log-in. PLS HELP ME. i want to remove ubuntu 11.04 and just go back to using linux mint 10 and stretch out the 25 gb that was removed from it. how can i do this?

i have important files in linux mint that i have to recover for my THESIS. pls help me anyone. i need step by step procedure and line commands that i need to type because i am not well-versed with it. thank you very much.

[Lakshmipathi]

* Don't install anything on Ubuntu - because it may overwrite your lost data.

i installed it to dualboot with linux mint 10. i resized the disk to increase the disk for ubuntu but what i forgot is that linux has only 17 gb left of memory to use for itself and that i partitioned ubuntu to use 25 gb.

You are using Mint for sometime now. What your total hard disk size ? How much mint was using before installing Ubuntu? Now you installed ubuntu on 25GB. If possible ,boot with a Live-CD . Check the partitions list using "fdisk -l" command. What was your File system with mint and whats the new file system with Ubuntu? The documents you need to recover is in .pdf format or other format ?

[Lakshmipathi]

i tried to log-in and it just showed a black screen and went back to the log-in screen with the same message. it just comes back to the same log-in screen everytime i try to log-in.

Do you mean,you can go up to Mint Login screen ? If so ,then your chance for recovery file increases greatly (hopefully)

[yancek]

Was Linux Mint the only operating system you had before installing Ubuntu?
Are you able to boot into Ubuntu?
If so, do that and open a terminal from the Applications tab at the top of the Desktop. In the terminal type: sudo fdisk -l(lower case Letter L in the command). This will output your partition information which you can post here. Indicate in your post which partition has Ubuntu and which has Mint if you know.
If your partitions are there, you may be able to access and save your data. Post that information and someone should be able to tell you the next step to try to save your data.

[vamunar]

Do you mean,you can go up to Mint Login screen ? If so ,then your chance for recovery file increases greatly (hopefully)

hello lakshmipathi. thank you for your reply. i have posted in another forum and i have done somethings already that i am unsure is correct suggested by someone else.

attached is the results of a bootscript.

the same guy suggested i type these commands after i recovered my mint files from ubuntu.

sudo mount /dev/sda6 /mnt

and

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda

here are the results after i typed them in

sudo mount /dev/sda6 /mnt
but this came out

"mount: can't find /dev/sda6/mnt in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab"

then i tried the code:


sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda
and this came out:

"/usr/sbin/grub-setup: warn: Sector 32 is already in use by FlexNet; avoiding it. This software may cause boot or other problems in the future. Please ask its authors not to store data in the boot track. Installation finished. No error reported."

that's about it. then i restarted and it doesn't get to choosing ubuntu or linux. "grub rescue>" comes out and i don't know what to do, nothing happens.

[Lakshmipathi]

hello lakshmipathi. thank you for your reply. i have posted in another forum and i have done somethings already that i am unsure is correct suggested by someone else.

attached is the results of a bootscript.

the same guy suggested i type these commands after i recovered my mint files from ubuntu.

...

that's about it. then i restarted and it doesn't get to choosing ubuntu or linux. "grub rescue>" comes out and i don't know what to do, nothing happens.

Sorry for the delay.
Wait , I'm getting confused. Which is your priority ? Recover files from Mint first and then Restore dual boot,if possible? Or restoring dual boot?

From the boot scripts ,I can see /dev/sda1 is your mint partition.
Do you have live-CD? You can use them to boot and do "fdisk -l" to list the partitions.
And you can mount them using "mount" command.

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt and do ls /mnt to view that partition files.