joshricco

Well, everything seems to be working out great. I got GParted working an d it looks like there is only one partition. Also, it turns out my HD was only 250 GB (which makes a hell of a lot more sense). Anyway, thanks for all the help and for putting up with my shenanigans/n00bliness

So I installed ubuntu (I'm actually making this post on the computer in question) and everything seems to be working fine. The only thing is, I feel like I may have lost about 70 GB's of storage space. If anyone has an idea as to what could have happened to that 70 GB's please inform me. . . also, after installing Ubuntu, I thought I'd check GParted to see if I had any unallocated space, but GParted had conveniently disappeared. Anyway I'm pretty sure everything's working out fine for now. I'm going to try vista again as soon as I can. Thanks for all the help guys

It's a possibility, I got the CD from my friend a couple weeks ago. What I'm thinking about doing now is trying to boot off a flash drive. The problem with doing that is that I need an ubuntu machine and this is the only computer I have. also, I've only recently taken an interest in all things tech, so I'm not entirely sure what MD5 hashes are or how to check them against the hash on their site. Could you please explain? EDIT: I'm burning a new Ubuntu disk right now EDIT EDIT: Most excellent victory! It seems as if the new disk actually works! Jesus H Tapdancing Christ! Now for the bad news, when I use the fdisk /dev/hda command it cannot open /dev/hda, also, I cannot find GParted and when I try to open it in console the console tells me I need root privileges. I'll keep messing around with it. If anyone can help me access GParted (i've never used ubuntu before) I would be much obliged. EDIT EDIT EDIT: sudo GParted worked out just dandily, I deleted the 33 MB partition I made but I still get the non-system disk (or whatever I said it said earlier) on startup. Also, I have 33 MB or unallocated space, should I just delete all of my partitions, (C and R), just create one with the unallocated space, and install vista? Thanks for the help so far guys

as afore mentioned, same error I get when I try to install it. I have tried every possible option found in the boot menu.

ok, and to boot into the live environment, I just select the "Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer" option?

Well I have no way of accessing GParted because I cannot install ubuntu, or any OS for that matter. As afore mentioned, I cannot get past the install screen for any of them and as a result cannot access any of the helpful software inside. From what I'm hearing, I need a way to delete partitions without installing an OS. So, if there are any programs that I can burn on to a CD and boot off of that delete partitions, thats what I'm looking for. EDIT: And no, no pebkac. . . well maybe. I'd like to think I'm not that much of a n00b. Anywho, one way to make sure it's not just me being a dumbass is to give me step by step instructions. When something goes wrong I'll tell you and we can work from there. again thanks for all the help so far

I don't have access to Linux though, I can't get out of the install screen and that's all I have access to along with that console I told you about (initramfs). As a result, I don't have access to a terminal. In response to Sparta: Boot the GParted live disk? (if I'm missing out on any important concepts please correct me) -Josh

"fdisk" is not registering as I command. The console I'm using is the one that is brought up upon installation, because I can't get past that point (thats when the errors start showing up) before I type in the command it says "initramfs". It seems as if there is only a limited amount of commands that can be accessed from this menu. deleting the partitions sounds like the best thing to do, I just need to figure out how to do this with the limited access I have. thanks for all the help so far, Josh EDIT: To Dingleberries: So I just put GParted on a disk, boot from it, and I can delete my partitions that way?

Hey there, when I type boot /dev/hda I get a response: bin/sh: boot: not found. I cannot really get to the desktop, all I have is the console that shows up during the install process (when the errors start showing up) is there some kind of option to boot to the desktop? EDIT: In vista, when I browse for HD's to boot off of, I get three partitions: One 3 GB partitions, one 7 GB partition, and one 7 MB partition, my HD was origionally 300 GB.

I really don't care about any of the data on my hd. I just want to get it up and running again as fast as possible. If you could give suggestions (step by step) on what to do I would be much obliged. thanks for putting up with my noobliness.

ok, the error is "Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 178898, end_request: I/O error, dev sr0, secctor 1431184" this occurs when I try and install ubuntu from disk. this is on a laptop btw, if that helps.

If I could boot from any of these cd's then I could figure this out, but I can't seem to boot. In vista it asks for a drive to boot to (none of mine show up), in xp it blue screens, and in ubuntu this weird error keeps popping up. I'll relay that error message to you when damn vista disk ejects.

how can I remove the partitions I created in the boot menu?

So I was trying to partition my HD so I could dual boot Vista and Ubuntu. To make the partition I used Vista's disk management. Although I had plenty of empty space on my HD it wasn't showing up as shrinkable space. In an attempt to optimize shrinkable space, I defragged using Vista's defragger and a specialized app to defrag. After defragging I still couldn't open up more that 7 GB shrinkable space. In a last ditch effort I downloaded a specialized program that would partition my HD. Long story short, I created a small partition, and now my computer is unbootable. When I tell my computer to boot from the HDD it tells me "non-system disk, press any key...". I've also tried booting ubuntu, xp, and vista from disks to no avail. please help, Josh