Problems booting after converting Windows partition to Fedora

[cma37]

Hello- Sorry in advance- I don't know what the hell I am doing, so this might be unnecessarily long winded.
A friend of mine installed linux on my computer about a year ago in a dual boot set up. I didn't take the time to learn anything about it until Window crashed. Thinking I had all my files backed up, and wanting to force myself to learn linux, I followed these instructions:
http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/...o_Fedora_Linux
After which two problems arose:
1) I had dropped my external hd shortly after backing everything up, and had thought nothing of it- however, I later found that none of the files I had recently moved were still there.
2) I converted my FAT and NFTS partitions to ext3 following the instructions above- except now I can only boot in single user mode (then typing startx) because things aren't mounting properly. I think I screwed up grub.conf- following the "Editing the Boot Menu" section of the instructions- I didn't know which values to change and what the values should be changed to (default=value it says in the instructions)- I'm confused by the whole hd(0,0) designation. I don't know if I screwed up fstab as well, but I can successfully mount this new partition in single user mode.
Sorry, I've scoured the internet and pestered my friend- he uses Ubuntu now- and have come up with no answers.
If you need information on my gparted, or my grub, or fstab, I'll post what I can.
Lastly- is there any chance to recover leftover windows data from it new mounted ext3 partition? gparted says there is about 1 gig of space used on this partition- is this just space taken by default by the hd itself?
If there is no chance of me getting these files back, would it be best if I just reinstalled?- I have nothing of value on my linux- and am using an older Fedora- v. 6 I think- so it would probably be something I should do anyway.

[JohnVV]

well if you can post your what version of fedora you are using and...
/etc/fstab
/boot/grub/grub.conf
and the output of the command

fstab -l

fstab can be ran from the install dvd or #1 disk from the install cd's if this is fedora 5,6, or 7 .Or from the fedora live cd
if this is not Fedora 9 then do a fresh install of fedora 10
fedora 8 will hit "End of Life" ( EOL ) on jan 07 ,NO MORE UPDATES if this is fedora 7,6,5,4,... then you are already PAST it's EOL .

[cma37]

I'm running fedora core 6

/etc/fstab:
LABEL=/ / ext3
defaults 1 1
devpts /dev/pts devpts
gid=5, mode=620 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs
defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc
defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys /sysfs
defaults 0 0
LABEL=SWAP-sda5 swap swap
defaults 0 0
LABEL=SWAP-sda6 swap swap
defaults 0 0
/dev/sda1 /vol2 ext3
defaults 0 0

(The last line being that which was in the directions, but not adapted to the environment)

/boot/grub/grub.conf:

# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, # eg. root (hd0,2)
# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda3
# initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,2)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedore Core (2.6.18-1.2798.fc6)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/nitrd-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6.img


Not really sure what you mean by fstab -1 -this command did not work in my terminal- but if you want output (df -h):
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 3.6G 3.1G 316M 91% /
tmpfs 501M 0 501M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 68g 181M 65G 1% /vol2

[cma37]

Thanks for replying too!

[JohnVV]

first DO NOT REINSTALL Fedora 6 .That is a DEAD version of fedora .
Install fedora 9 or 10
http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora
as to retrieving the data on the, now reformatted, windows partitions
Maybe??? but not likely .
----------
using a different machine , unless you have been using the drive that had win on it for the past week -- if so forget about it --
dl and burn System rescue CD
http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
on it is a program called "PhotoRec" and " TestDisk "
http://www.sysresccd.org/System-tools#Recovery_tools

[cma37]

This may be redundant but when booting normally (not in single user mode)- the item 'mounting local filesystems' fails, as dies 'mounting other filesystems', to which is appended 'mount: mount pt 0 does not exist'.