On 30 August 2010 16:21, <[email protected]> wrote: > I'll try to be sucinct as possible, but also explain as fully as I can. > > Booting up, I get the grub menu. Choosing any of the 4ish(?) Ubuntu > choices (exept restore versions) results in hung system. Choosing XP > results in hung system. Choosing one of the restore options results in a > scrolling screen of text, so fast it is difficult to pause and read but I > do recall some bad messages relating to DMA. I can get to grub prompt but > I haven't much of a clue from here whether this is a good thing or not. > > Portege does not have floppy drive - just DVD. However, I did try > re-installing XP but it hangs when it comes to trying doing anything with > the hard drive. Tried a number of live CDs again in an attempt to use > partitioning software to sort it all out, but to no avail. Even > attempting to delete partitions - it just hangs. Latest attempt was using > a live version of Gparted but again although it can see my partitions any > attempt to change them causes problems - its as if they are write > protected; but no feedback from tools says this. > > I'm investigating whether I can repair the MBR - if in fact that is wrong. > Thought I'd found some utility to do this but it doesn't appear to be > part of any distro I have. > > All very frustrating. As I say - any tips would be appreciated. >
Hello Dave, My first guess would be a problem with the hard drive, 8 years is a long time especially living in a laptop. >From your live Ubuntu CD/USB, you could try the following: 1) check the partitions are being recognised using cfdisk sudo cfdisk /dev/hda - assuming your laptop hard drive is at /dev/hda (hda is the first ide hard drive) 2) Check for badblocks on the file system using a command called badblocks. For example sudo badblocks /dev/hda1 > bad-blocks-first-harddrive-partition.txt - assuming hda1 is your root (/) partition These two commands may give you some information as to if your hard drive is faulty. Otherwise I guess it is a case of running the system log viewer and seeing if there are a lot of errors being generated somewhere. gnome-system-log & Good luck. -- John Stevenson Lean Agile Consultant / Coach jr0cket.com | leanagilemachine.com
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