fail to mount filesystem

[jay105]

hi guys

have been using karmic studio for around a month now, and have been recently experiencing some boot issues where 1 of 3 things are happening;

1) failed to mount filesystem, where maintenance shell is initiated

2) insert boot media and press any key to continue

3) i get to log in and everything looks ok until i click the application menu, where nothing appears and all logos (shutdown/log off etc) appear as red crosses

any help would be greatly appreciated

[jmadero]

seems to me like some serious corrupt files. Did you split your home partition from your root partiton? That would make things a lot easier....if not, backup your home folder and reinstall from a flash drive (takes about 8 minutes). What were you doing immediately before this started happening? Did you install something new? An alpha or beta of something?

[devils casper]

Try to update your system

sudo apt-get clean all
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

In case it doesn't work, execute this

df -h

Post output here.

[jay105]

having taken the advice to clean install, ive tried 2 separate images (4 when considering live and full) only to be getting a grey screen that i cant get away from.
anyone help?

ubuntu is seriously making me consider a return to the darkside as ive had nothing but fatal problem after fatal problem with it. , c'mon guys, dont let it happen!

EDIT: wish id have seen devil's coding before jumping!!!!!

[jmadero]

lol threatening to return to Windows probably isn't going to get the help that you want Keep in mind that Linux has to work 1000x harder to get anything to work since almost all hardware providers only code for Windows.

That being said, have you tried the alternate install?
Complete Download Options List | Ubuntu

Sounds like you just have a weird video issue, install from the alternate and then get the video working after it's installed. If that doesn't work, maybe it's time you try another Distro, there are plenty of good ones around, Fedora and OpenSuse are aimed more towards beginners but you can try any (I highly recommend against Gentoo for a new user)

[jay105]

excuse the space between my posts, im either very busy or very unproductive

the windows comment was tongue in cheek i assure you

i tried all the alternative downloads for ubuntu you suggested. the wierd thing is, i tried it on my laptop and the same thing happened.

the only constants here are my flash drive and the unetbootin program used to set it up. could one of these be causing some issues? ill try another flash drive but id still be using unetbootin regardless of distro/version.

im going to try another distro and get back to you

thanks for the continued help!

[Leppie]

you could try re-installing the desktop meta package

sudo aptitude reinstall ubuntu-desktop

[Jonathan183]

having taken the advice to clean install, ive tried 2 separate images (4 when considering live and full) only to be getting a grey screen that i cant get away from.

Are you getting a grey screen when you try to boot the alternate CD image or after the install process?
Do you have any live CD image you are able to boot from?
I'm not sure if the media checks on the boot options will work on a flash drive ... have you tried running them?

[jay105]

today i tried a clean boot of fedora 12 live via usb (different flash drive, same unetbootin), and managed to get all the way to istalling on the hard drive (ruling out any video issues). when it came to the partition manager, my internal hard drive was not being recognised. this would obviously cause all of the other problems listed before.

is this a common bug found in fedora12, or has my hard drive gone? (wrong forum in know but many dual boot etc)

also, as it took a while before failing completely, is it (hopefully) likely the wire connectors?

any help is appreciated

[jay105]

having done a bit of research, it seems my seagate hard drive is one they had to send out a firmware updates for to stop them breaking down. is there any way of updating its firmware without an operating system? haha this is a nightmare :P