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View Full Version : [ubuntu] How to recover boot failure



nailujc
February 9th, 2011, 02:42 PM
Had Ubuntu 10.10 running fine on a Dell box, shut down as normal earlier in the week but now won't boot from GRUB (ends up with Busybox screen and initramfs(?) prompt). PC is a dual boot system which still boots OK into the XP partition on the same hard disk. I've tried all the other Unbuntu boot options in the GRUB menu (older kernels and the 'recovery' / non-recovery options) but all produce the same failure to boot into Ubuntu. I've searched the forums and tried various things but nothing has worked so far.

I tried the fix of booting from an Ubuntu 10.10 live CD, creating a mount point and mounting the relevant linux partition before using #apt-get update and #apt-get upgrade options to repair the installation. This seemed like a logical simple solution BUT the partition will not mount!! Further investigation using the Disk Utility app in the Ubuntu drop down menu indicated an error message along the lines of 'cannot mount Daemon inhibited' which I can't seem to find much information about fixing.

Using Gparted it looks like all the partitions originally set up on the disk are still there.

As a linux newbie I put a lot of time into getting the system set up (scanners, printers, webcams and software) and would be really annoyed to have to do it all again if at all possible ...

Can anyone help me further diagnose the specific problem and how it could be fixed???

Many thanks