This actually happened yesterday. I'm not entirely sure if it is the hard drive. I just wanted to get some feedback. This is some of what it spits out. I'm already shopping for a new computer. I thought about replacing the hard drive, but the integrity of the rest of the components is questionable.

 

hda1 contains file system with errors, check forced

duplicate or bad block in use

multiply-claimed blocks in inode 508023: 1075028 1075028

2 multiply-claimed blocks

unexpected inconsistency, run fsck manually

fsck died with exit status 4

auto file system check of root failed

manual fsck must be performed and computer must be re-started

fsck should be done in maintenance mode with root filesystem mounted in read-only mode

mainenance shell will now be started

bash: no job control in this shell

bash: groups: command not found

bash: lesspipe: command not found

bash: command: command not found

bash: the: command not found

bash: dircolors: command not found

bash: command: command not found

bash: the: command not found

boot up a liveCD if you have one, fsck the disk. all should* be fine.

 

*not guaranteed but theres a 90% chance you don't need to splash out on anything

 

tips for the future: wait till its shut down PROPERLY before yanking the powercord(the most common cause of this error)

buy a surge protector if you don't already have one

don't lick electric eels.

To do that, I would have had to buy a new DVD drive and probably a new hard drive (it had been making lots of suspect noises). I got a newer, improved p4 for a 100 bucks. Many thanks for craigslist. Now I have armored RIMM, a 1 MB cache, and a lot more than 8 gig hd, as well. Works so much better.

 

For future reference, in linux, how do you shut it down when it is completely frozen? Is it supposed to time out after a few hours or something? One thing about Windows is that it has a much better ctrl-alt-del these days.

press ctrl-alt-F1 to drop to a terminal and login. type 'sudo reboot'

or if that fails log into the box using ssh...

or if that fails, connect a serial console...