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I messed around with my partition table a few weeks ago, now I can't start up Ubuntu, except recovery mode.

It gives me an error message in the beginning like /device/sda1 is not ready or not present then it FREEZES.

Is there a way to restore it?

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It's hard to know precisely what's happened. I suggest that perhaps the UUID (unique identifier) of the partition has changed with your playing around but it might be broken more than that.

Whatever happens, you'll need an Ubuntu CD. It doesn't have to be the same version as what you currently have installed, but it might help. Burn that to CD/USB and then boot to it.

The next bit is fairly simple. Install boot-repair by opening a terminal in the live environment and firing this off:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair-ubuntu

Then run it from the applications menu. For more help using boot-repair, follow this guide but it's pretty simple.


If that doesn't help, something is more screwed up than any of us would like. There could be partition damage so check to see if you can access it (again, from the LiveCD). If that works, I'd be tempted to rescue any data I might need and reinstall Ubuntu. It's probably faster and cleaner than trying to bodge it back into life.

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