initramfs shell - /dev/Mango-root does not exist

[MartinHansell]

Heeeeeelllllllllpppppp?#@@!@#%^&%&#!!

I upgraded from intrepid kernel 2.6.27-9 to 11 yesterday and the whole thing just died on me... It was part of the standard upgrades, but for some reason only a partial upgrade could be performed.

Now when I try to boot I get the dreaded following...

Gave up waiting for root device.....etc
ALERT! (sounds serious)..-root does not exist. Drooping to hell!

BusyBox v1.10.2 (Ubuntu 1:1.10.2-1ubuntu6) built-in shell (ash)

then the cursor flashes like so...
(initramfs)_

so.... am I completely screwed?

I tried to reinstall using the Oct live cd for 8.10, but all that did was make it faster to reach hell. I got as far as changing to system root (from live cd root) to use apt-get and install lvm2 so that my lv's would be recognized by the system, but bash did not think apt-get was installed, even though it was there, plain as day in /etc. So i got stuck there.

A side effect of this is that when i try to boot in recovery mode the system shows that it cannot "enumerate" any usb device. i guess that's just a hardware-failure-symptom of the bootroot failure?

Any ideas where do i go from here?
Many thanks....
Martin

[alterKrieg]

Same problem here. I'm booting ubuntu from a USB because the CD drive on the comp is shot. I made a live USB from unetbootin and tried most every variation of install I can come up with. So far, attempting to boot to anything besides puppy linux yields this same boot error.

I tried manually having the comp initialize the kernel but it told me that my kernel was corrupted. Is there something in this process causing this?

Any help would be great.