Failed installation wrecked the boot process & partition table - please help!

[boothruwindow]

First Cup of Ubuntu

Join Date: Mar 2009
Posts: 4

I just tried to install Ubuntu 8.1 on a two-drive Acer tower. When I got to Step 4, there was nothing but blank space in the uneditable text box where something apparently should have been listed, and a lot of disabled buttons. The only options I had were to press the Quit, Back, or Forward buttons at the bottom, so I pressed Forward. The error message was


"No root file system is defined.
Please correct this from the partitioning menu."

Well, I thought it was supposed to be taking me to that menu, so there's something wrong.

This was not my first installation attempts, and I have done at least one with this version which was successful. The availability of an unused 250G hard drive in the tower (well, I only know that there were two hard drive partitions, having never opened the tower) had beckoned me to experiment, and I wanted to try different Linux flavors after deciding on whether I wanted 64-bit or 32-bit. Somehow or another, this time, I ended up panicking and trying to back-arrow back to the partition configuration window when I noticed that the "Guided" installer was not utilizing my extra hard drive - it would only install Ubuntu on the free space of my Vista drive, and would not respond to my attempts to fix that in "Manual". So I went with the only choice which it gave me, and then the installer crashed. Now I can't even boot into Vista - when I restart the machine I get a GRUB 22 error!

I did a sudo fdisk -l, and here is the output:

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa0e4765c

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1274 10233373+ 12 Compaq diagnostics
/dev/sda2 * 1275 31055 239215882+ 6 FAT16
/dev/sda3 31056 31447 3148740 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 8029 MB, 8029470208 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 976 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 976 7839698 b W95 FAT32



Vista files are still there, but my boot system is all messed up, and I can't I can't install Ubuntu, so I don't know what to do!

I think I'm in deeper now than I really thought possible - I actually followed instructions which were posted somewhere on editing the GRUB, and now I'm not even sure that I have one anymore - plus, the CD installer is no longer helpful, and really seems to be lost too. I sure would appreciate anyone who could help me sort this out.

Thanks.

[devils casper]

First of all, try to fix Vista OS. Follow instructions from here.
I would suggest you to create partitions for Linux before installing any distro. GParted Partition Manager is available in Ubuntu LiveCD. Create two partitions : ext3 for / and SWAP. Select Manual Partitioning in Partition Section during installation and assign / mount point to ext3 partition. Installer will detect SWAP and Vista OS.