Cfrgtkky

Forgive me if this post does not contain specific details on this technical problem. This happened a few days ago, and I can't remember every minute detail. Hopefully what is described here is enough for someone to help me solve this problem.

Recently, I've been having problems with my computer. One day I was downloading a file from a possibly questionable website when my computer locked up. My only option was to power off my computer by holding in the power button. Come to find out when I started my laptop again I was faced with a black screen. After a few minutes that black screen turned to blue with an error message. It was not a “BIOS blue”, i.e. “blue screen of death,” but it looked a lot like the the graphics of the Windows OS. The error read something like “system 32 folder corrupted.” Now, I'm not one of those computer wizards, but I know enough to tell that is not a good sign. I'm only left to assume that I got a virus, or maybe I just screwed it up with a hard rest. I don't know.

So, after all this I just decided to install Ubuntu onto the hard drive instead. This is because I don't have a Windows disk. My computer came with Windows pre-installed.

I took a USB drive and made it able to boot into Ubuntu. When I booted to Ubuntu for the first time I could see the hard drive broken into four partitions on the Launcher side bar. Each partition had a unique name. The names were something along the lines of OS, Repair, Restore, and something else. I then ran GParted to delete each partition and reformat the hard drive. I think that when I did this I messed something up because when I tried to run the installer I couldn't install it properly. Now every time I boot Ubuntu the hard drive no longer shows up in the Launcher or GParted. I think that this is because it became even more corrupted when I deleted all the partitions.

I'm not sure what to do at this point. Is there something I can do to fix my hard drive? Is there any software that I can install that can access my hard drive and let me reformat it? Is my hard drive too corrupted to fix? Maybe it's physically damaged?

Any advice?

Edit 1:

Since I did a poor job explaining, here is a picture that shows what exactly I am seeing. As you can see I can only see my USB drive from GParted.

Edit 2:

I still have yet to find the answer to my question. I think that it is clear that Ubuntu can not recognize the hard drive. If anyone has any applications that I can use that are already on the OS or that can be downloaded so I can fix my hard drive I would be very grateful. Unless of course there is a better way to fix it.

Edit 3:

I discovered a command for Linux called "fsck". Does this ring a bell to anyone? Can this be used to check the current state of my hard drive? Anyone? Please. Help...

Edit 4:

I am grateful for all the answers I've received thus far, but I've realized something.

When asking this question I tried to give as much information as possible. I was afraid that if I did not I would get ignored. This has seemed to distract people from the actual question. I should have asked about hard drive corruption and left out installing Ubuntu all together.

I have learned a lesson in that it's about asking the right question and not about giving as much information as possible. Making the question more direct consequently makes the answers more direct as well. This was my mistake. I'm going to reform my question to make it more precise. Hopefully I can soon find the right solution.

I doubt that there's hardware corruption. What's happened is that because you've deleted all the partitions, there is no partition to mount. A partition is kind of like a virtual drive. It is the interface to the actual ones and zeros, and provides some structure. It's like you need a body on a car chassis.

So just go ahead and run the installer and select the "Wipe everything and install Ubuntu" option (or equivalent wording). It should take care of everything for you. Keep in mind, since you already deleted Windows, you've got nothing to lose by experimenting. So use this oportunity to have fun and learn something. Or just go listen to some heavy metal. Or go eat a sandwich, see if I care.

I'm not sure what you have done so far, I'll assume you have a hard drive that has messed up partitions.

Plug in the installation disk for Ubuntu, let it boot up. Open the installing menu. Now from here, select manually formatting partitions. There, I need you to select every partition and click on the - sign.

Now, while choosing a Free space, press on + sign to create a new partition with Ext4 format. Choose about 20 to 30 GB for this partition and set mount point / for it. Also make sure the format sign is clicked.

Create another Ext4 partition and mount it as /home, this would be where you put your files in it. I'd put 50 GB for myself, you can choose any other amount that will work for you.

That's it. Continuing will ask you for configurations such as user name and timezone.

Good luck