Hi Everyone

I have totally messed up my hard drive in my desktop. I was trying to install a game under wine. I clicked off the install screen on to something else. Wine locked up, my computer started beeping, and everything locked up, no mouse, no keyboard, just a loud beeping. I pressed the power button to shut down, waited about 10 seconds and restarted. My desktop errored out and said grub error 22, unable to mount unknown wn block 0/0. I think it said something about no cpio magic also.

Im using Ubuntu 9.04.

Ive tried using the install disk to rescue the system but it will load a few screens like it is trying to do something and the screen goes black then nothing.

Ive tried a live disk, same thing. (ubuntu, suse, Knoppix) none will boot.
I was able to get PCLinux to boot with a live disk, but when I tried to read the hard drive it would lock up and everything quics working.

I have booted into my windows hard drive by switching the primary cable.
windows does see the drive. I went into windows computer admin section,
and was able to remove the linux partitions, and then reformat the drive.

Windows is happy with the drive, but linux will not boot still even with
a live disk. I dont get the grub error anymore, it says that there is junk in compressed drive, unable to mount system in unknown block wn 104/0.

I went to the Seagate website and downloaded their Seatools for windows
I ran every test they have and they all pass. Seatools says the drive only has 580 hours on it.


Still no Linux booting.

So, my question is, is there anyway to save my drive?
Is there a utility that will actually reformat all the drive and not
just the part that windows likes?

Any suggestions on what to do next?

Thanks in advance for your help

Vanessa

Chances are your MBR and/or partition table has been overwritten. The very best solution is to boot from a Linux rescue disk, run "fdisk", and reestablish the original partitioning information. To do this, you would have to know what the original partitioning was, and it's critical to duplicate it exactly. It's always a good idea to make a record of the partitioning of your hard drives, and include this information in your backups, so you can recover a trashed MBR/partition table. And remember: DO NOT recreate a filesystem on the drive -- that would erase all your data.

By the way, Wine probably didn't do this without help. There is a chance that the game installer tried to write to the MBR and got confused, or encountered a flaw in Wine at the worst possible moment.

There are many game installation programs that do very nasty things to your system, programs whose actions make Osama Bin Laden seem like a compassionate humanitarian.

There's also the possibility that this is all coincidence and your hard drive or controller hardware just decided to fail at a provocative time.

Hi Lutusp

thanks for the quick reply. However I have already tried booting from several live disks, and
was not able to access the drive. Under windows I ran the fixmbr command and reformated. Windows likes the drive but linux will not boot.

Do you know of a program that I could use to access the drive under linux. Ive tried two versions of Knoppix already and they would not boot.

What do you think?

Vanessa

Define "would not boot". If the MBR is trashed, you may have to wait a long time for the BIOS routines give up on detecting the drive. On the other hand, you need to make sure you are able to boot from a CD/DVD, and that the CD/DVD boot has priority over the hard drive.

Ideally, you have a BIOS that allows you to select the CD/DVD drive as a valid boot device, and give it priority over the hard drive. If both these are set up, it will minimize the time required to boot from CD/DVD. But many BIOSes can hang while trying to detect the contents of a drive. In some cases it is a simple matter of being patient.

Lutusp

not booting means that the ubuntu start menu comes up, it asks me what i want to do.
it starts to load, then the screen goes black and nothing happens. have let it sit
for 30 minutes and still nothing.

I have my computer configured to boot from the DVD first, the hard drive second.

Ive done all the right things to diagnose the problem. What Im looking for is a
program that will write over everything on the drive and restore it to a factory
condition.

Vanessa

There are some rescue disks (or choices on install disks) that deal with this by not testing the drives before offering some choices. I recently had a similar failure, so I booted from the Fedora 11 install disk which allowed me to choose rescue mode instead of the normal installation menu, early in the boot process. This prevented the kinds of tests/hangups you appear to be describing.

Then I ran fdisk, reinstalled a sane MBR and partition table, and was back in business.

Obviously this exact sequence may not happen for you, but it's possible and worth a try. I don't know the Ubuntu install disk, but it just might have a similar setup -- a text-only preliminary menu that asks what mode you want, including a rescue mode, followed by the normal kernel load and a more formal, graphic installation menu. It sounds like you need to avoid the second menu from starting up.

The rescue mode avoids obvious problems like a hangup while testing an unresponsive storage device.

Well i finaly figured out how to fix my hard drive. it turned out to be something
stupid on my part. I forgot that I had installed an Nvidia video card and it was
interfering with the re-installation. after i took the card of my computer i was
able to reformat the hard drive and install Ubuntu again.

I feel pretty dumb for not figuring it out for two weeks, but oh well, that the way
it goes sometimes.

thanks for your suggestions.

Vanessa