Help with Linux can't seem to fix anything
 

Hi,
I am new to Linux got it about 2 months ago and discovering more and more each time a use it.

I have windows xp media center also on the same pc with a dual boot.Everything was working fine until one day ago when i tried booting up windows and got the blue screen of death flash for a second not even time to read the problem,then suddenly the pc restarts itself.

it does boot up ubuntu, but in ubuntu can't seem to mount the windows drive like before, now i get the error message

ntfs_attr_pread: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error Failed to read NTFS $Bitmap: Input/output error NTFS is either inconsistent, or you have hardware faults, or you have a SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot into Windows TWICE. The usage of the /f parameter is very important! If you have SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first you must activate it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g. /dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation for the details.

any help is appreciated, i need to fix the windows because all my programs are there and songs i cant get back if lost,please help

From what you wrote, it seems that you have a corrupt NTFS partition that may actually have physical bad blocks. Another problem you may have is a corrupt registry--again, it could be related to a bad drive.

On the Windows side, try to boot into Safe Mode by hitting the F8 key as soon as you select your Windows installation. Once there, if you are able to boot, run chkdsk /f from the command prompt.

If you can’t boot into Safe Mode, boot with a Windows XP CD (if you have one), and go into the recovery console. To get into the recovery console, you must know the actual Administrator password if one is set. You can't login via the recovery console using just any account with Admin rights. Again, when there run chkdisk /f. Depending on your drive and circumstance, the check could take quite a while. Also, after a successful run, you would be wise to do another.

If you use the recovery console, your boot loader providing you your dual boot may get overwritten. Once you get your Windows back up and running, use a Linux recovery disk to chroot into your Linux installation and run a grub install (see man pages and/or Google for details). Normally, I use Fedora/RHEL derivatives; however, I would assume there's something similar on the Ubuntu side of the house.

In either case, once all is up and running, it may not be a bad idea to investigate getting a new drive. If you want to back up your entire dual boot setup with NTFS and ext3 partitions, checkout Clonezilla (http://www.clonezilla.org/).

More importantly, good luck.

thank you so much for the quick reply i am about to start doing exactly what you say now

man i owe u eveything your advice worked like a charm and now i am up and running thank you

Well, I am glad to read that you are back up and running. Congratulations! What steps did you take? Did you use Safe Mode or were you forced to log into the recovery console?

i was forced to use the recovery mode from the cd,then i used chkdsk and it made everything run fine on the windows and didn't have any effect on the ubuntu at all now my whole system is fine,man i can't take thank you enough now i backed up all my stuff to my norton account and i'm good