ubuntu 11.10 crashed and i cant boot it

Question

I installed Ubuntu 11.10 some time ago. I was watching videos in youtube, when it suddenly became unresponsive.

I waited 5-6 minutes, and restarted (with the power button on the pc). It open up the bootloader and let me to chose between Ubuntu or Windows XP.

When I selected Ubuntu, it showed the purple screen, like normal and let choose recovery or normal. I'm not able to start Ubuntu, and if I select normal nothing happens.

If I select recovery, it says something like "loading ramdisc" and it stays like that with no results ...

The really big problem is that I don't have an optical drive, so were can I put the live CD?

Soon, I will buy new pc, so I don't want to spend my money on a new optical drive. What can I do ?

Also, how can I recover my files?

I'm writing this from win xp, which works.

Answer 1

If you want to get the files back from Ubuntu under Windows XP you could install Ext2 IFS for Windows: http://www.fs-driver.org/ This will allow you to connect your Ubuntu hard drive into your Windows box and mount the volumes so you can access your files. There are other options for reading ext formatted filesystems from Windows, do a search for "mount ext windows" to find more possibilities. Ext4 support may be limited but you should be able to at least read the volumes so you can back up your files.