<html><head></head><body><div style="font-family:Calibri,"Segoe UI",Meiryo,"Microsoft YaHei UI","Microsoft JhengHei UI","Malgun Gothic","Khmer UI","Nirmala UI",Tunga,"Lao UI",Ebrima,sans-serif;font-size:14.66px"> <div class=" hide-outline">Hello. This once happened to my dad. An expert came to look at his computer, and it was a hard drive failure. I suppose this is most-likely the issue you have, unless you have Windows Vista installed on the same hard drive. Then, it would definitely not be a hard drive failure. To make sure, I would try re-installing Xubuntu, or try to figure out if this is a boot loader issue. If this is a problem or error with the boot loader, this can probably be fixed by just re-installing GRUB (or whatever boot loader you have). I hope this helps!</div> <div class=" hide-outline"> </div><div class=" hide-outline">---Ryan</div><div> </div> <div> </div> <div style="border-top-color:rgb(229,229,229);border-top-width:2px;border-top-style:solid"> From: Liviu Andronic <<a href="mailto:landronimirc@gmail.com">landronimirc@gmail.com</a>> Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2012 1:49:34 PM To: Xubuntu Help and User Discussions <<a href="mailto:xubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com">xubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com</a>> Subject: [xubuntu-users] harddisk failure, or Xubuntu refuses to load </div> <div> </div>Dear all I'm in a bind as Xubuntu refuses to boot up and I'm unable to pinpoint the cause. Here's what happened: My Asus laptop was working on the table under Xubuntu Lucid when I grabbed it as usual with one hand from below. Then I noticed that it froze as, I assume, I touched (somewhere somehow and too much) the harddrive. As it had frozen, I then powered it off by holding pressed for 5sec the 'power on' button. When starting it again, it automatically launches harddrive checks then throws up a myriad of error messages on the virtual consoles. To attempt to diagnose, I booted up on a LiveCD and checked my 3 Linux partitions using e2fsck and GParted. In both cases the ext2/ext3 partitions turned out as 'clean'. Mounting the drives and accessing the folder structure and individual files works fine, according to limited testing. (Booting Windows Vista on the other side of the computer works fine, too.) However, when I try to boot up Linux _from_ the disk, Ubuntu still automatically launches harddrive checks, throws up a error messages on the virtual consoles and is unusably slow. I am attaching a log of 'dmesg' [1]. Essentially the following error message gets repeated again and again: [ 1371.730197] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 [ 1371.730205] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 [ 1371.730211] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 1371.730225] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:00:1d:e6:f5/00:00:0b:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 4096 in [ 1371.730227] res 41/40:08:1e:e6:f5/00:00:0b:00:00/00 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F> [ 1371.730234] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR } [ 1371.730239] ata1.00: error: { UNC } [ 1371.734703] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 [ 1371.734720] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled sense code [ 1371.734725] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE [ 1371.734733] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] [descriptor] [ 1371.734743] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex): [ 1371.734748] 72 03 11 04 00 00 00 0c 00 0a 80 00 00 00 00 00 [ 1371.734770] 0b f5 e6 1e [ 1371.734779] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed [ 1371.734789] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 0b f5 e6 1d 00 00 08 00 [ 1371.734809] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 200664606 [ 1371.734831] ata1: EH complete So what's going on? My best (and hopeful) guess is that although the harddisk and file systems are fine along with most of the underlying data, when grabbing the laptop the OS was accessing/modifying several files in particular got somehow corrupted and are now impeding a proper power up of the system. (Although I could get onto the console and to the GDM login screen, trying to log into X using any user name takes an eternity and never completes.) Could anyone suggest how to tackle this? Should I attempt to reinstall Xubuntu? (I have /home and /boot on separate partitions.) Anything else? Regards Liviu [1] <a href="http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=93465134138264110255" target="_blank">http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=93465134138264110255</a> -- Do you know how to read? <a href="http://www.alienetworks.com/srtest.cfm" target="_blank">http://www.alienetworks.com/srtest.cfm</a> <a href="http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-dict#speed-reader" target="_blank">http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-dict#speed-reader</a> Do you know how to write? <a href="http://garbl.home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/e.htm#e-mail" target="_blank">http://garbl.home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/e.htm#e-mail</a> -- xubuntu-users mailing list <a href="mailto:xubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com">xubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com</a> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-users" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-users</a> </div></body></html>