ubuntu overwrote windows drive and files installation
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I understand. Well ubuntu booted successfully until i ran testdisk and recovered "HP" and "FACTORY_IMAGE" as seen in the script. My bet is that making those two partitions bootable left no space for the ubuntu partition to work. I initially installed ubuntu because my windows had a booting problem, I'm not sure if that's the case. So do you recommend me re-installing ubuntu?
So your windows system is gone? You need to recover it from the FACTORY_IMAGE partition. At least, I would guess that is it. Or do you have a full windows installation CD/DVD? If you are going to recover/install windows, do that before you install Ubuntu. Given the problems you had, I would also suggest you google installing Ubuntu 11.04 and reading a few tutorials so you know what to expect before starting. If you come across something you don't understand during the installation, it is always better to stop come here for info/help rather than hoping for the best.
Your bootinfo script was not complete. Did you delete part of it before posting as it usually contains a lot more information than you posted?
Last edited by yancek; 07-25-2011 at 02:02 PM.
Reason: question
Yes it was, but i hadn't backed up my data in the FACTORY_IMAGE partition. I also have the full windows installation DVD. I tried to fix the windows startup problem with the dvd before installing ubuntu, but it didn't track any startup problems. I'll take your advice about reinstalling ubuntu 11.04. I've already watched a video tutorial about installing ubuntu before i tried it on the troublesome computer, but I guess I'll look into more tutorials. Thanks for the support!
As for the bootinfo script, I posted everything I got from the script. Should I post it again?
There is nothing wrong with the script - that's why I downloaded that version to test it. See the error message at the bottom. That indicates (to me) that the sda1 partition is unreadable (if you want to see what output you should have gotten, search LQ for RESULTS.txt). I suspect the script just crashed at that point - nothing to be gained running it again I would think.
From a liveCD see if your files are on that large partition as it appears to be still readable) - if so, save them off to a USB.
Then I'd scrap the lot and re-install Windows followed by Ubuntu. It is possible to test if that partition is still bootable, but difficult to manage remotely via a list like this.
Alright! I'm getting to fully understand what the problem is now. I burned a windows live cd using a program called active @ boot disk. I ran a partition recovery and then a file recovery and saw that my files are still viewable. They're deleted and my windows partition is just free space. So I guess ubuntu knows there's something wrong and isn't capable of reading the NTFS, unwilling to say there's nothing there. Moreover, I can't recover the deleted files back to the partition itself. Looks like I need to create a disk image and save it to a flash drive then recover it from the USB.
I need to re-install windows with the backup, then install ubuntu.
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