ichliebede

Hello. Now I have a serious problem with my laptop and I can't use it anymore. I need help bad.

I used to have both Vista and Kubuntu. It was with Vista first, and then someone helped install Kubuntu too, the start-up/booting menu was that Kubuntu as first on the list. Later there was a problem with Kubuntu that it was always with noises after I entered the desktop. I decided to reinstall it, but how I did was:
I deleted its partition on Vista and made its space as free (I wanted to create a new partition, but it was impossible at the time, the option was grayed out). So I reboot my laptop in order to create a new partition inside the system at startup when it was about to (re)install Kubuntu. But there was an error already before my laptop could reboot, it was something like this:
grub stage 1.5
grubbing error please wait...
grubbing error 17
But I shut my laptop down anyway and restarted it, right with the Kubuntu live CD in the CD-ROM, it started reinstalling after I created a new EXT partition. But then the installation couldn't be completed because it said there was a vital error. I had to ignore it and continue... Anyway, the new-installed Kubuntu looked strange, a lot of system folders on the desktop, and I checked the Storage Media, my hard disks D and E were said not to exist (I had C, D and E. C for Vista) Why is that?
Then I reboot my laptop again, at the very beginning it showed the same error texts and couldn't get to the start-up/booting menu anymore.
(The Kubuntu was 8.10 (upgraded from 8.04) and the reinstallation version is 8.04. I hope this doesn't make any difference to anything...)

I searched some info online, and found out that I need to reinstall grub. But I just wanted to be very sure if this is the only problem that it has right now. And will my files be gone or they are gone already? I am so worried and sad since I'm a newbie to Linux, and I forgot to backup my important files. :'(

Please help me, I'd appreciate it so much!!

(Please excuse my English and long message)

Lakshmipathi

I hope not. I hope you haven't deleted windows partition.

Do you have Linux Live-CD's?(I often use Fedora for this) If so , Boot into Live CD and try running the following command and post it's output here. It will allows to analyze your problem

__________________
- Lakshmipathi.G
-------------------
FOSS India Award winning ext3fs Undelete tool and tutorials www.giis.co.in
First they criticize you,Then they laugh at you,Then they fight with you,Then you win. - M.K.Gandhi
-------------------

Lakshmipathi

and also post your /boot/grub/menu.lst file contents

__________________
- Lakshmipathi.G
-------------------
FOSS India Award winning ext3fs Undelete tool and tutorials www.giis.co.in
First they criticize you,Then they laugh at you,Then they fight with you,Then you win. - M.K.Gandhi
-------------------

ichliebede

Thank you for your reply! Well, I don't think I deleted the windows partition because it can still be shown under Storage Media in Kubuntu. However, my other two hard disks can't be shown there - there's a cross saying it doesn't exist, and there's no name for either of the disks, only "new parition", maybe they somehow can't be recognized or? How come?
What I did when I deleted the Kubuntu partition was:
I opened the control panel and clicked "create new partition..." and there was a window then, where I could see all of the partitions in the PC, and I found the one for Kubuntu and the other (swap), and I deleted them both, and made them as new free space. Then I reboot my laptop, at the end, it couldn't be power off, showing the error message. After reboot during me reinstall Kubuntu, I use manual option and devided the new free space into two (ext and swap) for Kubuntu, under the same menu I clicked on the ext one and clicked "continue" or "install". That's it. I gave "/" to the ext one, but not to the swap one. I'm not sure if this was right or not. This is the first time I've done something like this...

I'm now on campus, when I'm home I'll try what you told and post it here.

Thank you!!

yancek

If you deleted your Kubuntu partition and were previously booting both systems with Grub bootloader, most of the bootloader files are gone but stage1 of Grub is still in the master boot record.

Above is what the Grub error means. You've changed the partitions by deleting and I would suggest you post the information requested above by Lakshmipathi.

ichliebede

Here is what it says:

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x624aa2e0

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 4972 39937558+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 4973 21545 133122622+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 21546 32487 87891615 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 32488 38913 51616845 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 32488 38202 45898437+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 38203 38913 5711076 82 Linux swap / Solaris


However, there's no menu.lst of grub...

EDIT:
When I reinstalled Kubuntu, it's shown on the window that there are sda1 to sda7 but without sda4. I reinstalled Kubuntu on sda5 and sda6 as swap. Vista on sda1

ichliebede

Thank you for your reply. I don't know if both systems were booting with grub bootloader, so I suppose the start-up menu, which allows you to choose which to boot first, is the grub bootloader, right? Since after I deleted Kubuntu partition, there was such an grub error before my laptop shutting down, I guess both systems used it.
There was "grub loading stage 1.5", is it the same same as stage1?

yancek

Earlier you indicated you deleted your Kubuntu partition and later tried to re-install it. Look at your fdisk output. All of your partitions are windows (ntfs) except sda4 which is an extended partition and can't hold data and sda6 which is a swap partition. You don't have any Linux partitions.

I don't know what you mean by this? What window? Is the fdisk output you posted from before or after you tried to re-install Kubuntu?

I expect you were using Grub to boot both systems because if you were to use the windows bootloader you would have had to go through several steps to manually configure it to boot whereas Grub usually automatically detects other operating systems.

stage1.5 is not the same as stage1. stage1 is a very small file which goes in the master boot record. There are several different stage1.5 file for specific filesystems and a stage2 file as well as menu.lst and device.map files.

It doesn't seem as though your Kubuntu re-install worked. You could create another logical partition within your extended partition (sda4) to install Kubuntu to.

ichliebede

Excuse me that I did not express clearly. What I meant is:
After I deleted the Kubuntu partition, it became free space, this was done on Vista. Then I reboot my pc. I put in the live CD of Kubuntu to reinstall, I chose to install manually, so under the manual menu (that's the "window" I meant, sorry), partitions were listed. I made the free space as a new partition and divided it into two (one ext3 for Kubuntu, and the second - way smaller one - for swap). And in the menu, there were only sda 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 (there was no sda 4), but in the fdisk list it's from sda1 to sda7 (with sda 4 in there). The fdisk list I posted is after I tried to reinstall. According to the fdisk list and the situation I explained above, does it mean the partition list is messed up or?
And I have no idea, that before it was about to reinstall successfully (like around 98%), a pop-up saying that "grub-install (hd0) failed - A fatal error", and the installation stopped, then the log-in of Kubuntu showed up, I could log in to its desktop...

rcgreen

I'm guessing that you wanted to install linux on /dev/sda5.
The only problem is that it is flagged as an NTFS partition.
Install again and make sure you tell the installer to label and format
the partition as EXT3.

BTW, you can ignore /dev/sda4. It is a container that holds
/dev/sda5 and /dev/sda6.