Goal: Remove personal files from hard drive to put on pen drive.

Hi for a reason or another my older version of ubuntu stop accepting my inputs (mouse or keyboard). I set up ubuntu onto a pen drive and tried getting access from there to my files but it kept saying I didn't have permission. I sadly then proceeded to install the newer version of ubuntu onto my HD keeping the older one as a partition (I believe). Now I can't seem to get access to the old files that were on the HD. I'm very new at this and I tried looking up how to mount and unmount (assuming that was the direction I needed to go in) but have been unsuccessful as of yet.

If anyone can help me out it would be greatly appreciated.
If you request any type of data please let me know how I should go about getting this data. (again sorry I'm very new at this)

Go to Computer browse you'll see different hard drives(partitions)
right-click select mount. You may have to put admin password.
Ubuntu 10.10 has ability to read accross partitions.

In the computer browser there is only one hard drive. Any suggestions?

What version of ubuntu?
Try this
sudo update-grub
or
update-grub

Run "sudo fdisk -l" to display the partitions on your hard drive.
Is there one you haven't looked at yet? If there is, you can mount it on /mnt and copy files of it. If all partitions are accounted for, you may have repartitioned and reformatted your drive.

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update-grub gave me this

root@pascal-Dimension-4700:~# update-grub
Generating grub.cfg ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-28-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-28-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
done

Version I believe is Dimension-4700 2.6.35-28-generic #50-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 18 19:00:26 UTC 2011 i686 GNU/Linux


root@pascal-Dimension-4700:~# sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4863 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00016f49

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 4658 37410816 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 4658 4863 1648641 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 4658 4863 1648640 82 Linux swap / Solaris


What would be the next step?

It appears that you may have overwritten os with new install.
Did you try booting the other kernels?

I think I tried doing that. Could you give me the steps just to see how. I don't want to assume anything anymore.

At grub menu use arrow to scroll down to aby of the kernels showing on list except mem-test
press enter