Lost root partition grub error 17
 

Hi after shutting down normally my suse 9.3 pro system will not boot.I've tried the repair installed system from installation dvd and it says there are no valid linux file systems.Have I lost the lot?The drive is recognised fine by bios.Will I have to do a full reinstall or is there any way to salvage my system?I am really only worried about losing my pictures.I am a new linux user and appologise if this has been asked before.Regards John

Try boot from dvd again. Select boot from hard drive. If it works; great. If not, try again and select boot from cd/dvd.

The last option will boot from the kernel image on the dvd; not the hard drive. Once booted, create a mount point in /mnt for each of your Linux partitions. Example: if you have three partitions - / (root), /home, and /boot, then, from a console window, mkdir /mnt/root; mkdir /mnt/home; mkdir /mnt/boot.

Edit the running /etc/fstab (remember it's from the dvd and not the hard drive) to add entries for each mount point. Something like:
/dev/hda1 /mnt/root ext2 defaults 1 1
/dev/hda2 /mnt/home ext2 defaults 1 1
/dev/hda3 /mnt/boot ext2 defaults 1 1

Edit this example to suit your partition and filesystem setup.

Now, do not mount the partitions. Instead, run fsck -r on each partition (interactive mode - answer y or n to each proposed repair). You could also trust to blind luck and run fsck -a on each partition (automatically repair and end up with whatever fsck does - goor or bad). It's your call.

When you have fscked each partition of the SuSE installation, remove the dvd and try to boot normally.

Oops! Forgot to add: the reason for creating the mount points. After fsck is done, try to mount the partitions and open then in Konqueror or some other file manager. If you can mount them, we can hope they are sucessfully repaired.