EMERGENCY

[Dotan Cohen]

2008/12/5 Steven Vollom <stevenvollom at sbcglobal.net>:
> I was transferring a movie file from one partition to another; while
> that was taking place, I rotated to another face of the Compiz cube.
> The computer froze on one of the pages.  I waited in case it was a
> memory problem, however, nothing changed.
>
> The computer would not boot.  I attempted boot in the (can't remember
> the name at the moment so if you can figure out what I am trying to
> remember, the choice at boot where you go into a different mode for
> repair considerations) and the computer had a fail:
> [215.456827] Buffer Error on dev.sdc Logical block 0          fail
>
> Later it read, however without the red fail on the right the following:
> LDM_validate_partition_table ():  Disk Read Failed.
>
> Next I got a page which was no longer on the black screen that gave me
> repair choices which I tried both.  Poor memory makes accurate recall
> impossible, but if you have been here before, it had, I think 4 choices
> the first being to resume the boot.  I did 2 and 4 which contained an X.
>
> Finally the only option was to resume the boot.
>
> When I finally got the computer to boot to a screen, the mouse was
> extremely sluggish.  The keyboard worked to type in my password, but did
> not work when the computer finally opened.  The mouse worked, but each
> open page would not move by dragging, holding doen the left mouse
> button.  Each were frozen in place.  I could not accomplish anything so
> I rebooted again hoping that that may correct something.
>
> All the testing processes took extremely long.  the sbc problem
> remained. I repeated all the above steps and got a screen again.  It was
> difficult to get the packages that automatically open off the screen,
> however, I finally got to essentially the same situation as before this
> boot.  Because the computer had been sluggish since installing Compiz, I
> decided to remove Compiz.
>
> The keyboard worked so I opened Adept Package manager.  The computer
> froze when I attempted multiple package removal of Compiz installations
> and I had to start over.  I couldn't yet write an email.
>
> This time, I only attempted to remove compiz (a single package) and was
> successful.  I remove a couple more.  Then I tried to remove the rest,
> and got frozen in mid-process and had to start over.  I am writing this
> instead of attempting to remove additional compiz installations in the
> hope I can get through to anyone with lots of computer knowledge who may
> be willing to give me some steps of things to do to try to get things back.
>
> I am poor and alone, and don't have normal conveniences, and I also have
> an extreme need to be able to function on my computer.  I know I have
> bothered you a lot, but I am in a serious problem, needing internet
> access and not knowing when it will leave again.  TIA
>
> Steven
>

Without sitting at your computer it is hard to help, but sdc could be
an optical drive. Are you sure that you are not booting from optical
media (LiveCD in the drive by accident)? Regarding the problem with
Compiz, what video hardware have you, and which driver? The
description that you gave is called single user mode, and you did the
right thing by booting into single user mode, but I hope that you
didn't damage your installation by running the repair tools, which it
sounds like you may have done. If sdc is not an optical drive than I
would hazard a guess at a failing hard disk, try using smart tools to
determine that. You might want to do that from a LiveCD if you have
one (the Kubuntu standard install is a LiveCD).

-- 
Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il

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