Cannot boot, locked in grub

[fedupwithlinux]

I have a computer that crashed in an upgrade to 12.10 from 12.4 (Ubuntu). Now it will not exit Grub at all, and Grub will not recognize commands and seems to think there is no kernel. It cannot/will not find the harddrive, or anything for that matter. I can't access the terminal. CD drive is out. Cannot access internet via broken computer. All inputs other than keyboard are out. Toshiba harddrive cannot be rescued or formatted. Passwords lost, cannot be reclaimed. System is asking for the nonexistant harddrive password. Passwords reset several times by user; all rejected or lost. Any ideas?

[oldfred]

Welcome to the forums.

If you cannot boot a repairCD or a Ubuntu liveCD or USB, then the only choice is to remove drive and plug into another working computer. Then you should be able to mount drive and backup/fix or whatever.

Do you have a working bootable device other than hard drive for system repairs?

[fedupwithlinux]

Did that. It's saying that it needs a password for the harddrive that doesn't exist or is lost.

[fedupwithlinux]

Apparently it is perpetually stuck in Grub or the shell. In the shell it repeats: "Asking for cache data failed Assuming drive cache: write through"