@#%&$#'d up laptop

[ShizZy]

Okay.. I hope someone can help me here, otherwise I'm down about $700.

I have a laptop - it's a Compaq Presario, Athlon 2800 Mobile Sempron, 512mb of ram, 40gb hard drive, with a Radeon 128mb 200M. I need linux for my programming, so I partioned it off. 25gb for windows, 10gb for linux, and 5gb for backup files. Backed up all my files in the last partitioned, reinstalled windows and reformatted. Worked great.

Step 2... popped in the Ubuntu install disk. Went through the installation, installed it to my 10gb linux partition. Installed GRUB boot loader. Everything went well. Restarted, boot loader popped up, I click ubuntu. Logo comes up, starts loading, then bad news - I get a blue glitchy screen that says something allong the lines of...

"There was an error initializing X, your graphical user interface. Chances are, it is an issue with incorrect configurations. Would you like to view your configurations to diagnose the problem?"

I click okay, and it shows me a bunch of specs - I know very little about linux so I can't tell what's wrong. Click okay again, and it brings me to the linux command prompt where I can log into, but with out a gui I can't do or fix anything. I tried the "startx" command but I get the same results.

Now I reboot, try and get into Windows. Select it on my boot menu, starts loading, gets to the welcome screen ( well, almost) and then my laptop resets! And it keeps doing this, and I can't get into windows. I try reinstalling ubuntu, and tried the live cd, but same thing every time - X failure.

Last resort, I pop in my windows disk and hope to just reformat the partition and get things back to normal. Goes through the setup, formats the partition, copies files, then asks me to reboot. If I leave the install disk in there, it just keeps going through the same procedure indefinetly, without letting me actually install and run windows. If I take it out before the reboot, then nothing happens and my screen just goes black with the white blinking cursor.

Any ideas? I'm really freaked out... can't lose the stuff on my backup partition, and don't know what to do :(

[Remote]

tried another linux dist, perhap one that runs from cd only?

or open your laptop, and try to acess the stuff on the hd from another computer?

[ShizZy]

Like I said, I can't lose that 5gb backup, and it's a new laptop, plus I'm not an ace with computers. Seems to risky to open it up. Linux dist maybe, but windows is more important at the moment.

[bcrew1375]

Well, if you could get it to boot with a run-from-CD linux distro, couldn't you get it to network to another computer and transfer the files? If you couldn't connect to a network, maybe you could use FTP? If you can still access the partition with your important files, there's got to be way to get them off.

[ShizZy]

Yeah, what linux distros don't use X though? That's what's failing. Then again, even if I can get my files off, I still NEED this laptop fixed.

[thakis]

Nearly all linux distros can be used without X. See
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-June/msg03960.html
for how to tell grub not to start x. If you're not familiar with linux, you'll have a hard time to get your data off the laptop all the same, though :-(

Once your files are safe, it's probably not too hard to repair the laptop.

[bcrew1375]

Once you backup your files, it should just be a matter of formatting the disk and starting fresh.

[smcd]

Or you could always try changing the video driver from some card-specific autodected driver to something plain like the "vesa" module ;)

[ShizZy]

Got ubuntu to work uses the "NoAccel" option with the X config. That's not my problem anymore though.

My problem is getting Windows back. Tried deleting all other partitions and installing xp pro on my backup C (primary) partition. Same results, if I leave the boot cd in it boots off it again, if I take it out it does nothing :(

[ShizZy]

Errr can't edit my previous post... but I can't seem to get into my backup partition from ubuntu. This is killing me..:ph34r:

It's the demon laptop, dubbed by passive :P

[thakis]

Is the backup partition in your /etc/fstab ?

[ShizZy]

Negative.

[Jakob]

well then, it's commandline commando time for you, just search for any old howto on mounting an ntfs partition, I would tell you myself, but I honestly can't remember the exact mount command... mount -t /dev/hda1 ntfs or something, that probably won't work as I'm 99% certain I've got the order wrong:D oh, and I forgot to put in a mount point too!

[ShizZy]

Speaking of which.... it's an ntfs partition, so I can't access the files to back them up elsewhere over any linux, at least without a kernal recomp (Which I don't trust myself with). God damn.

Installed FC4 to tie me over until I get a chance to badger you again on irc jakob.

[thakis]

All distros (Knoppix for example) I tried can read ntfs partitions - you just can't write to them.
Like Jakob said, if the backup partition is not in your /etc/fstab, you have to mount it manually.