It's worth having a read about how SpinRite works
http://www.grc.com/files/technote.pdf I was looking for that this morning and I couldn't find it. I do wish he'd upgrade his website to the 21st Century but anyone who can fit what Spinrite does into 173KB can use whatever he likes for a website I suppose http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...lies/smile.png

I believe the website is quite deliberate. He abhors JavaScript, and from memory runs the website with static pages on IIS with custom assembly code ( i.e. no php/cgi back end code). It works and is secure so he is loathe to change it.

As I said - anyone who can write the stuff he does can do as he likes with his web page. I find his voice very irritating in the podcasts he does with Leo LaPorte (or whatever his name is). He is a security nut and always has been.

His other software is also all written in assembly and although some of it now out of date, it can be useful, specially on XP.

it did indeed copy everything,
now GRUB completes and I get to that splash screen that precedes the login window
which is an improvement by about 1/8th of a step from the the last time I started the machine with the other HDD (I couldn't get out of the 'repair filesystem' shell

So I suppose the question now becomes how do I make the machine shuffle a few more centimetres and fully boot to the OS

I got as far as being elevated to "Echidna" status,
now I have been dropped down to 'Hmmm"

Can you use a live disk to do a repair installation?

If you press escape during that splash screen does it display detailed information on what it is doing?

I have found a bit of a solution,
1 boot from the install DVD
2. take the 'repair' option
3. DON'T MOUNT THE INSTALLATION
4. activate the LVM and repair (using e2fsck) each partof the lvm
- you gotta google for the lvm commands

It takes a bit of time repairing the /dev/VolGroup/lv_home and the /dev/VolGroup/lv_root bits

I didn't bother repairing the lv_swap

But, and it's a big but, Having repaired the filesystem and the LVM I still can't complete boot.

If I reboot, it gets to the Fedora splash screen and that's all she wrote

I can do the thing and boot to a shell - from there I can see everything in my /home directory

So if I try and restart 'X' I get an error saying it's alrady running if I try and start a programme it says 'no display'

Fedora 16 doesn't use /etc/X11/xorg.conf to determine which monitor to use (I don't think)
so I'm at an impasse

How can I get a GUI?

should switch back to the GUI display

Note that doesn't close the gui, it just provides another virtual terminal into the system
Read
http://linux.about.com/od/linux101/l/blnewbie4_3_1.htm

IT might also pay to have a look at /var/log/messages for any error messages or problems.

You can also look at /var/log/boot.log (check for the latest non zero file) which keep a log of services started at boot and their start success/failure

It should switch back to a GUI but it doesn't http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...milies/mad.png

I get a black screen with a vertical cursor at top-left of screen

I've re-installed GRUB2
I'm about to uninstall the Video drivers and see if the native Linux drivers can generate a UI
to re-iterate

I'm as graphical as all-getout at the start of boot until I get to the "verne' splash screen and then everything halts
I never get as far as the next screen (the login screen).

If nothing changes soon it's probably time to get out the wire brush and dettol
- my latest back-up, sadly, is a month old

I don't suppose running deja-dup from a Live Fedora CD is going to give me a usable recent back-up is it?
(ie: it's going to be a back-up of /media/6hhajdyfg2736-o/saywot so I won't be able to do a restore, and it will have some goofy ownership issues as well I suspect)

If this forum had a "solved" button
I'd be clicking it now

To cut a long story short.

The PC is running again, I cloned the drive that had all the errors
took the clone and installed it into the case
booted using an old Fedora 14 live disc
identified the various parts of the lvm, activated them and ran e2fsk on everything (except the 'swap')
this allowed me to copy everything over onto anaother external drive
re-installed Fedora 16
Bob is your uncle

- it's the identifying/activating the LVM members that was the interesting bit

Now ...
The PC has two 1Tb drives Anaconda (the installer) asked that I nominate one drive as a data drive (that will be mounted only) and another for the system drive. So now instead of having a 2Tb machine I gots a 1Tb machine and a (mostly) empty HDD with the /directory.

I might use this partitioning again in a few weeks when Fedora 17 is released but throw in a SSD as the system drive and see what happens.