Netbook will not boot after upgrade

[jyossarian1]

I tried to upgrade to Natty last night and after attempting a restart, the netbook will not boot.

I've tried Linux 2.6.38-8-generic and get "Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown - block (0,0)....(there is more if it is important I will post).

I've tried 2.6.38-8-generic (recovery mode) and get more detail but the message ends the same and includes the "unable to mount fs" error.

I've tried 2.6.35-28-generic and get "the disk drive for / is not ready yet or not present."

I can continue and select M for manual recovery and get to root:~# but don't know where to go next.

Please help. I need my Ubuntu back.

[jyossarian1]

I went to root and tried: sudo apt-get update
The reply I got was "dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a to correct the problem.

which I tried and it returns, "dpkg: error: unable to access dpkg status area: Read-only file system"


???