Maximum PC

Okay, so I am always changing things around. Well once in a while anyway. Bottom line here: I used Paragon to alter the partitions on my hard drive, and one of the partitions was a Ubuntu ext3 partition. Didn't even think about it until I went to boot up. ERROR!!! It put me into fsb ... I forgot the name exactly. It alternately gives me error messages like inode xxxx at something and something is part of orphaned node at something. Sorry I'm not more specific. It always ended with either fix (y)? or relocate (y) or repair (y) depending on the message. I rigged my laptop with some stuff on top to just keep the "y" pressed as it repeatedly cycled through the numbers for about 3 days, hoping it would eventually fix it.

So now after I returned to check on my computer again while writing this question, I noticed that it stopped and had just kept filling the screen with "y"s so I stopped it and got a command prompt. I typed exit and got a shell failure message. I restarted and get grub loading 1.5 ... Error 2. I must admit that I am confused about this. I knew I might have problems with Ubuntu, but I thought grub would still load.

Any ideas? I was running Hardy Heron with lots of audio and video studio stuff installed. If possible I would like to save it. I think I can just pop in a live cd and probably access the files ... maybe. So that is the question here for all you who are far more experienced than I, can I save my files, can I save the installation, and for future reference, is there any partition software that can handle a Ubuntu partition?

There is a partition editor in Ubuntu, but I don't like using such things while I am running the same OS. I guess I could use the live cd, though, but didn't think of it. Also would like to know because one of my desktops will be receiving a larger hard drive and would like to re-arrange my lineup to accommodate Windows 7. I use two hd's, and have Mepis, Ubunut 6.06, and XP installed now. My aforementioned laptop has Ubuntu 8.04 and Vista installed. And as long as I am here, anyone know of a good way to partition the hd on an old world iMac G3?

I believe I saw a post here for Grub Error 2, but when I started writing this the computer was still cycling through and it just stopped while I was going in to look to copy the actual messages here. Either way, not sure my Error 2 was caused by the same thing as the other Error 2, and after I solve that I still may have a problem with my installation. So thank you for your time, I appreciate any help you can offer. Have a great day.

- Peter

If you wiped out the partition, I doubt you'll be able to see your files. I hope you have a back up so you don't lose any important data. Apps can be reinstalled and so can OS's.

A quick Google search on GRUB errors reveals that you've probably hosed that whole partition.

Fdisk -l through a terminal (probably want to use your livecd here) should show you what partitions are actually there.

If they're there, I'd probably just mount them through the livecd and copy my stuff out of there.