My understanding is that [c]fdisk does no formatting. If you change the table, write the changes, then change them back and write them without any formatting of partitions in between, you should be able to recover everything, though it may be risky. Definitely not for the faint of heart or for valuable data!

So where are you at now? Can you still access your data from an installed Linux or LiveCD? First thing would be to back up your data to a USB drive, CD, DVD, or network server. Then decide how you want your partition table to look. You can't repartition the whole disk from an installed OS, you need either a live Linux CD or Windows install CD.

If a CD won't boot it has nothing to do with an installed OS. It is either a BIOS setting or a corrupted disk. You'll need to enter your BIOS configuration at boot and enable and prioritize booting from CD.

If you just want to remove a Linux system without reformatting a partition, you could run 'rm /*' and 'rm -r' on all directories except the one where your data is stored, but that won't fix your booting issue; it will just hose your Linux installation.

I don't have any more ideas without looking at your current partition table (from fdisk or cfdisk).

If you have something to store the data on, you can mount the disk and get the data from it. I would be able to do it with a little playing around but I don't really know any simple "step-by-step" way of explaining it.

Well i am currently using Live CD of Ubuntu 9.04 , Jaunty Jackalope.
This is the output of fdisk -l :
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf920f920

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 14 9729 78043770 8e Linux LVM
I just ran, sudo rm -r /dev/sda1 And also
sudo rm -r /boot . But nothing happened. I mean the o/p of fdisk -l is the same as above.

You can't use rm on device files and expect the partition to be removed. You need to delete the partition from within fdisk.
Run fdisk /dev/sda, and you will get a menu that will allow you to delete or create partitions.

Still, I promise you that even after you do this your Windows installation problems will not be fixed.

run these commands on the Ubuntu live CD:

sudo mkdir /media/mydisk
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/mydisk

Now you should be able to access your data by going onto the folder /media/mydisk.

/dev/sda1 is a raw device file. You need to mount it in order to access the files inside. A mountpoint is a directory. 'sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/mydisk' will mount the device and make the filesystem available through the directory '/media/mydisk'.

I don't know whether ubuntu live cd uses a ramdisk, in which case you may have borked your /dev directory. No big deal, but if MTK358's commands don't work you will have to reboot the live cd.

It looks to me like /dev/sda1 is just your boot partition, and /dev/sda2 is where your data and most of the system reside. 'Linux LVM' means a logical volume, so there may be more than one logical partition that is not recognized by fdisk. Logical partitions are under a different /dev/ directory.

I think gparted might be a better tool; it might be able to find the logical partitions for you.

If you are trying to recover the data, you'll probably have *MUCH* better luck booting into your installed FC6, if that's still possible. Find your data, burn it onto a CD or copy onto a USB pendrive.

If you're not trying to recover data, from the ubuntu live you can nuke all your partitions, make one new partition type NTFS (assuming you're still trying to install Windows), if you want to dual-boot make one NTFS, one Linux swap (=2x RAM) one Linux native. Don't bother with Linux LVM unless you know what that means and have a good reason for it.

I don't really understand the issue. The installing process does not automatically come up like you stated unless you chose the wrong starting option. And if the program does auto start, you just close it out and go into the menu. What I am guessing you did was you chose to install Ubuntu from the beginning instead of using it without making changes to your harddrive option.

Another possibility is that your Cd isn't working properly, you can use the check CD for defects option to test it.

But you can use gparted just fine with a Ubuntu live CD.

Tell us step by step every single thing you are doing, and if it seems right, then show a picture of your screen to show us what it looks like when it starts up. But really going through these extra sudo steps seems a bit over the top, seeing as how gparted should work just fine.

-Jessica-

I don't really understand partitions very much, I just thought that LVM prpbably means virtual memory. Anyway, if the OP tries my commands and /media/mydisk contains the wrong data, try this:

sudo umount /media/mydisk
sudo mount /dev/sda2 /media/mydisk

Note that the command is umount, not unmount!

It appears that this is not your computer, and you have not been granted administrative rights to it.

So I do not think that we on LQ can help you further with gaining root privileges.

Have you read the LQ rules ?

FWIW I have seen the same message on my own computer, especially in my logs, from when I've entered incorrect passwords. It doesn't necessarily mean this is not the OP's computer. Considering the other 2 or 3 (or more??) threads the OP has created during his adventures with this computer, I'm inclined to believe it is his. Why would someone want to go through all this pain to install Windows illicitly, while preserving an FC6 installation, on someone else's PC?

linusunis, please tell us, is this your own computer?

You can't mount LVM partitions this way. The lvm system creates new device nodes under /dev/mapper. I suggest you read this how-to:

http://www.howtoforge.com/linux_lvm

OK then, I guess run

sudo lvdisplay

?

@linusunis;
I have merged your 3 closely-related threads---Please keep the discussion all in on place. Thanks

Strange. I posted to another thread and it appeared on this one...

because I just merged 3 threads, perhaps?