update to Hardy Heron problems

What I would do is start from the live CD and try to reinstall.

if that doesnt work, I would resize the partition of your ubuntu installation with Gparted and create new partitions, so that you have two partitions for ubuntu of minimum 10 Gb and one for a separate /home partition.

then reinstall a fresh new ubuntu in an empty 10 gb partition, and place the separate partition in mountpoint /home.

then use the live CD to move your old /home to the new /home.

than restart the pc and look if the new ubuntu suits your needs. If so, you could probably remove the old and use the space to make a backup with this rescue CD

http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

But perhaps is there some one with a more advanced solution

I can not figure out how to do all the above suggestions recommended by adonet. If I select one of the recovery options which come up on the screen when I reboot (I choose the latest version listed) it puts me into the terminal phase and that works okay. Isn't there some way (or some commands) that I could type in there to get the system up? From Googling the "Hardy Heron start up problems" this seems to be quite a common problem as the system can not find the boot files which, if I read the comments properly, is the reason for the Initramfs file. Isn't there a way of reading the CD and finding the proper initialization files? Thanks for any additional suggestions. Rodney

After reading some of the Q&A questions, I tried the following with some success. I opened up in the recovery mode (first line below the normal opening line when you have dual boot on the screen) which put me into the terminal for Hardy Heron. I typed in "apt-get install ubuntu-desktop"
After quite a bit of screen activity--it came to fast for me to remember exactly what all was typed and left the message that I had to manually configure dpkg-configure -a so I just typed in "dpkg-configure -a"
Again, a fair amount of screen activity after which it returned me to the terminal. I then did a Cntl-Alt_Del at which time the computer restarted. I let it come up normally with Hard Heron as the choice in the dual boot. Ureka, the desktop came up just like it use to in Fiesty Fawn, I can get on line and so far all appears well

I may have spoke to soon, all is not well. I am having trouble with a number of things; when I go to the synaptic program and check for updates, I get the following on the screen. I do not know what action I should now take. any recommendations? When it says to please report...to who....how???
E: Problem parsing dependency Depends
E: Error occurred while processing openoffice.org-writer (NewVersion1)
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/dpkg/status
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report.

more info, when I go to terminal and type in sudo apt-get install -f I get the following
E:problem parsing dependency Depends
E: error occured while processing openoffice.org-writer (new version1)
E: Problem with mergelist /var/lib/dpkg/Status
E: The status list or status file could not be parsed or opened.

Rodney

I am not an ubuntu expert. I'm afraid I cant help you here. My suggestion still would be: do a complete re installation in a separate partition, then mount the old partition in a mountpoint

for example
run the live CD
start partition manager (Gparted I think its called)
resize your ubuntu partition to about at least 10 Gb
make two other partitions of type ext3 of about at least 10 Gb each
take note of the numbers of these partitions
e.g. /dev/sda1 for the old ubuntu
/dev/sda2 en /dev/sda3 for the new ones. (these numbers are different on all harddrives.)
Ubuntu installs fine in logical partition that are a part of an extended partition. Instead of windows that requires to be installed in a primary partition. Only 4 primary or extended partitions are allowed on a harddrive. In an extended partition you may define as many logical partitions as you like.)
then install ubuntu and choose manual when the partition manager starts.

Choose the first new partition to install ubuntu in. Its type ext 3 and mountpoint is /. It should be formatted.
make the second partition mount at mountpoint /home It could be formatted (I did)

Then let the installation take place.

reboot the system and start the new ubuntu

start nautilus and make a new directory in /media
for example /media/oldubuntu
open a console and mount the old ubuntu:

mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /media/oldubuntu

now you can copy your personal files from your old home directory to your new home partition.

After this you could remove the old ubuntu partition and resize your home partition. (use the live cd for this)

I tried to reinstall 8.04 with no success. Never did get it to work properly. In desperation, i just reinstalled the older 7.04 (Fiesty Fawn), let it put in all the updates and everything works fine. My question now is "Is 7.04 with all the updates the same or equivalent to 8.04?" It seems to work flawlessly on my AMD based computer (an older Gateway). I guess I should say that this solved my problem mentioned above although it really wasn't solved, the problem was just removed. Anyway, thanks for the help offered, it was appreciated. I am still so new with Linux that I may not have followed all the directions given properly so part of the problem is most likely mine. Rodney

7.04 will be supported till oktober this year. After that you'll need 7.10 for another half a year.(supported till april 2009)

8.04 is a long term supported version. I think till medio 2011 or so. But if it doen't work, you 'd better use 7.04 or 7.10 or hope that version 8.10 (oktober 2008) will work again fine for you.