Very much so feeling like I messed up

Discussion in 'Linux, BSD and Other OS's' started by Someone28624, Nov 22, 2007.

  1. Someone28624

    Someone28624 Big Geek

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    Background: My parents have an oldish Dell desktop. It has Win XP It's been running very, very, very slowly lately. The thing is loaded with viruses and malware. I update their antivirus software and clean things up everytime I visit. But I just am not there often enough to keep up with things, and the computer is sliggish, slow, and freezes incessantly. While they've been using Win XP, the computer also has "Breezy Badger" Ubuntu and Mandrake 10.2 on partitions from my earlier experiments with Linux.

    I decided to convince them to try Gutsy Gibbon after reading a ton about how great it is. My goal was to merge the Mandrake and Badger partitions and put Gutsy Gibbon on there. I, of course, backed up everything on the computer before messing with any of this.

    However, this is where things go downhill. The Gutsy Gibbon CD I made doesn't seem to work. It freezes up almost as soon as I boot from it, and the screen goes fuzzy. So I decided to boot from the Badger CD I had to at least merge the Mandrake and Ubuntu partition.

    Through some course of action, however, I succeeded in merging the Windows and Mandrake portion, and creating a large amount of free space. I formated that free space to EXT3 and installed Badger on there again. So now I have Badger on there twice- one that boots, one that won't- a GRUB boot loader, and no other OS's.

    Well, since I totally screwed things up, good thing I backed up, right? Well, here's where my story gets even sadder and more pathetic. I used Nero for the backups, and now all the files are filename.jpg.nco. And I can't open them. Googling shows me this is a Nero format, and it seems I just need to uncompress them, right? How can I do this (preferably from Breezy Badger, as that seems to be the choice OS at the moment)?

    And how do I go about getting rid of my useless partition that won't boot, upgrading to Gutsy Gibbon, and maybe even getting a NAFTS partition on there for our good friend Windows?

    And now that I think about it, I never checked that I have a Windows CD around. *sigh* As luck would have it, it's probably lost.

    In other words, I'd appreciate any help I can get here.
     
  2. Ghostman 1

    Ghostman 1 Mega Geek

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    You need to just wipe it all and start from scratch. at least thats what i would do..
     
  3. Fred

    Fred Moderator

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    Well, first of all have you tried uncompressing the .jpg.nco files using any built in programs in Ubuntu, like the Gnome Archive Manager? Secondly, its also worth trying something like 7zip which you can get by searching Synaptic or
    Code:
    sudo apt-cache search 7zip
    and when it tells you the exact name of the file, install it using
    Code:
    sudo apt-get install p7zip-full 
    As far as your partitions go, I believe ubuntu comes with QTParted. And once again, if it does not, you can always download it using Synaptic or in the command line using apt-get. QTParted is a graphical partition manager in linux, and it should do the job just fine for you by deleting, extending, and/or creating partitions.
     
  4. Someone28624

    Someone28624 Big Geek

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    Is there anyway I can upgrade to Gutsy Gibbon without installing from a CD? My Linux ISOs never work when I burn them myself.
     
  5. Fred

    Fred Moderator

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    I dont know exactly where, but in ubuntu there is a button that I think says "upgrade" and all you have to do is click that and the OS upgrades to the newest version. I think it is in the same window as where you do updates. I'm sorry I dont know for sure the exact location, but it should be something like that. Lemme know if this works.
     
  6. Someone28624

    Someone28624 Big Geek

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    I started over, I got 7.10 installed.
     
  7. donkey42

    donkey42 plank

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    start adept & "fetch updates" & "version upgrade"
     

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