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My system is totally messed up. What is the best course of action?
Tried to upgrade from USB stick and something went wrong.. The removing conflicting os message "stuck" with no disk activity or cpu. Rebooted and now the upgrade doesn't detect an OS on the existing drive.... My user data appears to be intact. How do I proceed without losing my data?
If your data is still there, it sounds like GRUB just needs to be reinstalled. I would suggest grabbing a Ubuntu Live CD or a Ubuntu Rescue CD and boot the computer off of that. Then, select the option to boot from the CD in "rescue mode". Go through the prompts, selecting your keyboard layout, etc...
It'll ask you for a hostname. Don't be alarmed - this is only temporary.
Eventually, you should get to a prompt, where one of the options is to "reinstall GRUB". Select that one, reboot, and see if it helps.
The upgrade I performed last night totally screwed my laptop up, and I just went through this entire method earlier today.
In my case, I was on a Dual Boot (two operating systems). Regardless of how many OS's you have (even if its just Ubuntu), you'll need a working Grub configuration.
2 solutions :
On the go : If I were you I would install over without formating. (you can do so with 1st option of graphical installer or (my preferred method) manually so you can be sure the "format partition is not checked.
Create a different user name just to be sure, then move your file in the new user name.
Conservative solution : You make a start up disk with a usb pendrive like with damn small linux or better slitaz. then you save you important data elsewhere, then you try the 1st solution.
