Is my system toasted? Any way to restore this?


grub> root (hd0,0)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

grub> root (hd0,1)
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x8e

grub> setup (hd0)

Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... no
Checking if "/grub/stage1" exists... no


Error 2: Bad file or directory type

thanks...
-h

Is this a new installation?
Did you have your system working? If so, did you make any changes just prior to this problem?
Your root (hd0,0) shows Linux on the first partition of the first drive.
Your root (hd0,1) shows Linux LVM partition.

What distribution are you using, Fedora? CentOS? other?
Either Grub wasn't installed or it is looking in the wrong partition for the boot files so do you have a LiveCD you can use to get partition information as well as the menu.lst to post here? Or do you have another Linux OS on the computer to use?

You haven't given enough information for anyone to really help.
You would need to use the LiveCD or another Linux OS on the machine to mount the partitions to get to the menu.lst file. You can run the fdisk command from the LiveCD from a terminal. Don't know what your knowledge level is so if you don't know how to do this, post back and include the information requested above.

install grub2
grub-install /dev/sda

LVM is a block device, not a filesystem. I don't believe grub (classic) supports LVM.

grub2 will bring its own load of heartaches.