System froze and wont boot...

[controlyourdog]

Hi guys my system just froze while I was browsing, never had it happen before so I was quite shocked, anyway just restarted it and now it wont boot. Got all my school work on there so now Im stressing. This is what comes up:

Gave up waiting for root devices. Common problems:
-Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
-Check root delay = (did the system wait long enough?)
-Check root = (did the system wait for the right device?)
- Missing modules (cat /proc/modules ls/dev)
Alert! /dev/disk/by-vvid/edd6e 542-bf... does not exist. Dropping to shell!


What can I do to recover this as I was stupid enough not to back up my school work?

Thanks guys.

[controlyourdog]

Update

I cant even boot from the live CD what have I done...

[MikeTbob]

Did you set the BIOS to boot from the CD/DVD drive? Do you have a USB drive and is the machine capable of booting from USB?

Alert! /dev/disk/by-vvid/edd6e 542-bf... does not exist. Dropping to shell!

Did you change something in the system?

[controlyourdog]

havent changed anything, I was just browsing the web and it completly froze. I tried booting the live dvd and it brings up the shell again saying "cannot find a medium contaning a live file system"

[MikeTbob]

havent changed anything, I was just browsing the web and it completly froze. I tried booting the live dvd and it brings up the shell again saying "cannot find a medium contaning a live file system"

That sounds like a bad CD/DVD or something...do you have any other LiveCD's?

[controlyourdog]

yeah that did cross my mind, ill get another one burned off. will i be able to recover my school work with the live CD?

[controlyourdog]

nope other live cd aint work either

[controlyourdog]

Can anyone reccomend like a recovery cd for linux I could use just to retrieve the files?

[TaZMAniac]

It may be a hardware related failure such as the IDE/Sata controller on your motherboard.
When you put the Cd/DVD in your computer and reboot, does the Cd/DVD drive light flash or flicker?

Also check your hard drive light when it tries to boot into the OS. Is there any activity?
Does it flicker once or twice then goes out?

If it does then it is trying to read the disk but can't do anything with it.
Try booting into your bios and under attached drives see if your hard drive and Cd/DVD drive are recognized. Do a re-detect to clear out the old settings and force the bios to detect the devices again. If it doesn't then you have a serious hardware issue. Especially if it doesn't see either.

Your only option at this point would be to remove the hard drive and slave it to a working pc.

Myself and many other members in this forum can never stress the point enough that people need to do backups.
I also keep several live distros on hand both on Cd and on a thumb drive just in case I have a file system failure and need to make repairs.

Good luck and hope you are able to recover your school work.
Hard to convince a teacher or professor that you did your work but it's on your dead pc.

[controlyourdog]

thanks mate ill give that a try. Thanks for everyones input.