Hello. Now I have a serious problem with my laptop and I can't use it anymore. I need help bad.

I used to have both Vista and Kubuntu. It was with Vista first, and then someone helped install Kubuntu too, the start-up/booting menu was that Kubuntu as first on the list. Later there was a problem with Kubuntu that it was always with noises after I entered the desktop. I decided to reinstall it, but how I did was:
I deleted its partition on Vista and made its space as free (I wanted to create a new partition, but it was impossible at the time, the option was grayed out). So I reboot my laptop in order to create a new partition inside the system at startup when it was about to (re)install Kubuntu. But there was an error already before my laptop could reboot, it was something like this:
grub stage 1.5
grubbing error please wait...
grubbing error 17
But I shut my laptop down anyway and restarted it, right with the Kubuntu live CD in the CD-ROM, it started reinstalling after I created a new EXT partition. But then the installation couldn't be completed because it said there was a vital error. I had to ignore it and continue... Anyway, the new-installed Kubuntu looked strange, a lot of system folders on the desktop, and I checked the Storage Media, my hard disks D and E were said not to exist (I had C, D and E. C for Vista) Why is that?
Then I reboot my laptop again, at the very beginning it showed the same error texts and couldn't get to the start-up/booting menu anymore.
(The Kubuntu was 8.10 (upgraded from 8.04) and the reinstallation version is 8.04. I hope this doesn't make any difference to anything...)

I searched some info online, and found out that I need to reinstall grub. But I just wanted to be very sure if this is the only problem that it has right now. And will my files be gone or they are gone already? I am so worried and sad since I'm a newbie to Linux, and I forgot to backup my important files. :'(

Please help me, I'd appreciate it so much!!

(Please excuse my English and long message)

First of all, too bad you have these troubles.

Do you have any other (healthy) system on which you can back-up your vital files? If you can back-up those files you really (_really_) don't want to lose, you can feel little more safe on repairing your system.. that's vital.

Once you have secured your personal data you don't want to loose, you can start trying to repair your laptop.

when you start up kubuntu from the live cd, open a Terminal and type fdisk -l, what does it say? Can you explain how the hard disk is configured right now? (which partition has which os or what functionality ?

If you can provide such information it will make repairing easier, as there is no such as golden rule to repair a system.

Thank you for your reply! No, I don't have a third system that I could use to back up my files. I have Vista on it, but I can't get into it. I could right now only log on Kubuntu by loading its live CD, and inside Ku buntu my other disks can't show up under Storage Media (it says: they don't exist, while they are there). I have no idea if there's any other way that I could copy my files safely. I have a mobile hard disk, but it seems there's no way to load my files through desktop...

After I typed fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x624aa2e0

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 4972 39937558+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 4973 21545 133122622+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 21546 32487 87891615 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 32488 38913 51616845 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 32488 38202 45898437+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 38203 38913 5711076 82 Linux swap / Solaris

My Vista is on sda1, no system on sda2 and sda3 (where I have my important files stored), reinstallation of Kubuntu on sda5, sda6 as swap. There is no sda4 on the partition menu for installation.

sda5 is a windows partition and you won't be able to install Kubuntu there.

sda4 is an extended partition and does not hold data which is why it doesn't show on the menu for installation so you can't install anything there. You can create an additional logical partition.

Okay, yancek has a point, but it won't help you much I'm afraid in solving this issue.

The problem is probably that Kubuntu and Windows have been trying to install the boot loader on the harddisk. (Don't know your level of knowledge, so excuse me if I'm telling something you already know). The very first part (small area, not partition) of a hard disk is the boot sector. Either the Windows boot loader or the Linux (Kubuntu) bootloader will fit.

You need to try to get Linux loaded again.. that's your main concern.. It's probably easier to start Windows once the Linux boot process is up and running again..

I'm pondering how to approach your problem. If you are patient enough, we will get this done. If you say your kubuntu is installed on sda5, then Windows has done something (nasty?) to it, because the fdisk -l tells that the partition should be some sort of NTFS partition.. This is only a tag, but could mean that Windows has actually wiped your Linux install..

When booted from the liveCD, can you try to do a 'lvm pvscan' command? I'm not familiar with kubuntu, but if it is like other modern distributions, it will have installed logical volumes, and those should become visible with 'lvm pvscan'. If no 'Physical Volume' is found, it might be that either the volume has been overwritten by Windows or kubuntu doesn't use 'lvm'.

Can you try to determine the existence of kubuntu on your system this way?

Sorry for replying late. I was busy-minded in the last days.

@ yancek
Thank you for explaining it to me. Now I get it.

@rhoekstra
Thank you too for trying to help me and being very patient! I was afraid of any more possible errors on my PC, so I first tried to backup my important files. And then accidentally I fixed it. It's actually very surprising: I reinstalled Kubuntu again but on ext2 instead of ext3, then it worked, grub was installed itself as well. I did not really understand why, it just seems that ext3 can't work with Kubuntu 8.04/8.10 along with Windows on my laptop.

Thank you all, again.

Good you fixed it. It sounds weird though that ext3 would not do the job.. I doubt that holds true, my guess is that just reinstalling kubuntu again has overwritten the boot loader, making your system bootable again, either or not with ext2 or ext3.

You can leave it at this, but know that ext2 is more susceptible to data loss or corruption when you turn off your system without correctly shutting down. fsck-ing a file system takes longer on ext2 than on ext3 too. It is because of the journaling technique which has been introduced in ext3. You could reconsider reinstalling once again, .. if it does not work, you know now how to fix it.. (AND, you have the chance now to back-up important files first).

Nonetheless, good for you you have it all fixed now !.. Cheers,

Thanks!
Oh, believe me, I actually had reinstalled it twice on ext3 earlier without making it work! So it was really weird.
Yeah, I knew that, so I upgraded it to Kubuntu 9.10 in order to use a better ext file system. But now I'm using Ubuntu, which I happen to like better than Kubuntu.
Now I feel relieved since it's worked out, and become even better.