Help! Ubuntu won't load

[Visvalor]

I'm new to Linux so I have no idea what I'm really doing. Anyways after the latest update about an hour or so ago, my computer insisted I restart. When I did, it just loads to a desktop (Wallpaper picture), a mouse pointer and nothing else. The little circle (Windows Hourglass Equal) keeps loading repeatedly on and off and I presume processing something in a loop. But it never loads to anything past that.

I've tried logging to recovery and followed a few procedures online suggested to help with linux boots such as

"sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg"

If it helps, I've recently installed Oblivion with wine, but never ran it. Before that, I installed Imagescan! for Linux. Other than that, haven't installed anything.

Also if it helps, the screensaver works. But that's it

[Visvalor]

CTRL ALT F1 reveals this repeating itself

It's stuck in a loop that looks something like this

[ 595 and changing numbers ata1.00: status: [DRDY ERR }
Same as above then;

error: { UNC }
exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
BMDMA stat 0x64
failed command: READ DMA EXT
cmd 25/00:08:00:1c:04/00:00:60:00:00:/e0 tag 0 dmg 4096 in
res 51/40:00:00:1c:04/40:00:60:00:00/e0 Emask ox9 (media error)
status: { DRDY ERR }
error: {UNC }
exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
BMDMA stat 0x64
failed command: READ DMA EXT
cmd (same stuff as above pretty much)

At the end it says I/O error, dev sda, sector 1610882048


From my guess, it's a hard drive failure...?

[TaZMAniac]

It may either be a bug or you have a hard drive failing.
When you boot up get into the boot menu screen and press F6 key.
Read the instructions on changing the boot option configuration line here;
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions

No add these 2 commands to that line;

noapic
nosmp

Now see if it boots into Ubuntu.
If it does the first thing you want to do is check the SMART status of your hard drive.
To do that go to System - Administration and click on the Disk Utility.
In the left pane click on the hard drive then in the right side you should see something that says SMART STATUS. The little "light" should be green and it should say healthy.
If it does then you may have corrupted files.

To do a file check you will need to reboot your pc and either open a terminal window from the boot menu or run the Ubuntu Live Cd and from the terminal run fsck.

Or before you reboot your pc you can open a terminal and paste in this command;
shutdown -r -F now

That will run a file check on boot up.

Good luck!