BleepingComputer.com: Drive won't boot/Rebuilding MBR/localhost login?

This thread may end up being all over the place. I don't even know where to start with all that's gone wrong. Heck, I don't even *remember* half the things that have gone wrong today ...

In a nutshell, a hard drive of mine that had two Windows partitions on it stopped being detected as an external (in Windows XP and in 7), and wouldn't boot as the internal master either.

So I used my Ubuntu 10.10 live CD, but Gparted wouldn't work (or maybe I didn't know how to work IT), and now there are remnants of Ubuntu on my drive. Nothing else, just unallocated space with bits and pieces of Ubuntu, which partially installed. I found out about the odds and ends via a few different Windows recovery disks/boot disks. They can't boot the computer because they can't find the Linux kernel.

So now, as Ramchu wisely advised in my Error 17 thread, I'm using my PCLOS live CD. No matter which option I choose on boot -- Live CD, Safe Boot, etc. -- I ultimately end up with a screen saying Kernel 2.6.33.7-pclos6.bfs on an i686 / tty1
localhost login: <blinking cursor here>

What do I type in? I tried typing root, but then when it asks me for a password, it won't let me type *anything.* I press enter and it asks me over and over. I've tried typing several things, and I get the same thing and ultimately have to just power down cold.

I have three live CDs: PCLOS (Dec 2010), Ubuntu 10.10, and Mint 10. Which should I use, and what can I do?

Thank you!!!!

floridaze,

PCLinux Live CD
Normal user is guest - Password is guest
Root user is root - password is root

type in guest and press enter then at the prompt for the password type guest and it won't be echoed back ( you won't see any action on your screen)
then press enter

then when returned to the [guest@localhost ~]$ prompt type startx and press enter and that should bring up the Desktop GUI

Regards

This post has been edited by Ramchu: 11 May 2011 - 05:52 AM

Aha! Startx! I had done root/root/enter, but it was the next prompt which had me clueless. I'll go do that immediately, and hopefully come away with an MBR to my name.

Thanks as always, Ramchu. You're a wealth of info and assistance, and much appreciated.

Except it ... sort of *would* go wrong for me.

I did guest/guest and I got about a dozen warnings: -bash, some are cannot change locale, some are cannot change locale input/output error. Then upon typing startx at the next prompt (localhost), it says -bash : startx : command not found

It seems to be taking serious issue with time zones? Cannot change locale (en_US.UTF-8)? I didn't enter any locale or time zone. UNLESS it's detecting what I entered when Ubuntu partially installed, when I entered my correct UTF-5? IDK ... I just want this blasted HDD wiped and rebuilt.

Looks like I was finally able to create the MBR! At least Boot It NG is now detecting it. That's a lot of progress from yesterday. w00t!

Now I'm waiting for the PCLOS desktop to give me more options than admiring the blue bull, hopefully the option to *install* said OS.

I hadn't gotten this far yet. Thank you again, Ramchu, very very much.

This post has been edited by floridaze: 11 May 2011 - 10:25 AM

I'm now back to where I started -- zilch. Here is what I posted in my "Gparted Problems" thread, problems which probably should be addressed over in this thread again:

I'm exploring Puppy now. It's definitely much faster than the other live CDs. Gparted is running via the Puppy CD. Running and running and *running.* I don't know if there even are any partitions on this drive any more. I've tried to run and/or install so many programs, I'm sure anything on it is very corrupt.

I'm just hoping that Puppy or the DBAN or something, somewhere, will give me some way to scan the drive and try to repair bad sectors/clusters, like chkdsk would in Windows.