Boot Problems

[void]

My sisters IBM thinkpad laptop messed up for some reason and its been causing some hassle and stress.

when the laptop powers up, the bios 'loads' up but when it comes to loading the os the screen goes blank but the backlight remains on. After restarting and holding f8 i was told what i suspected - no os found. i though simple - MBR has been damaged just need to load up TestDisk from the 'ultimate boot cd' and fix it.

However when trying to load the Utilities from the disk it appears to start to load up but then the screen goes blank but the backlight remains on like before. I inserted a windows cd and the same problem occured (after i pressed any key to boot from the disk). However i inserted a Ubuntu live cd and it loaded up sucessfully.

Any help available?

 

[void]

Well, the fact that ubuntu loads up fine is a good sign...can you mount your local hard disk (probably /dev/hda) and have a poke around? can it see a file system? what output does "sudo /sbin/fdisk -l" give?

I tried mounting /dev/hda1 on /media/windows but no files showed up. However using TestDisk i can browse though the drive.

Will this by any chance help: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17614687

 

[void]

Well, the fact that ubuntu loads up fine is a good sign...can you mount your local hard disk (probably /dev/hda) and have a poke around? can it see a file system? what output does "sudo /sbin/fdisk -l" give?

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo /sbin/fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4864 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 4864 39070048+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mkdir /media/windows
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount /dev/hda /media/windows/ -t ntfs -o nls=utf8,umask=0222
mount: /dev/hda already mounted or /media/windows/ busy
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount /dev/hda1 /media/windows/ -t ntfs -o nls=utf8,umask=0222
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ cd /media/windows
ubuntu@ubuntu:/media/windows$ ls
ls: reading directory .: Input/output error
ubuntu@ubuntu:/media/windows$