[kirby_t07]

Hello everyone, i installed ubuntu on my laptop today after finally completing months and months worth of essays. These are extremely important essays, i have backed up versions but they are not finished and i cannot re-write them as i dont have time. my problem is that ubuntu will not startup and therefore i cannot access my disk, i get the following error on starting up;
EITHER:
*setting up networking
/etc/rc2.d/s99 fetch mail: line 23:awk:command not foundund/Power-funcs:no such
OR
Starting system log daemon...d: command not found not found

Windows xp, which is setup to dual boot with will not work either.
I really ened to get some kind of os running asap so please anyone who can help me please do. xp just gives me the blue screen and no options so ubuntu seems to have some hope of booting, it managed to boot once, then on the second time i restarted it it gave me these error messages, i did not configure the network, could this be part of it? im trying live cd as we speak, and on the grup menu it gave me a thing called memory test so im running that to see if it can achieve something.
PLEASE HELP
excuse caps and type-o's i really need this sorted

[tsunam]

alright, first don't panic.

first things first when you load up do you get a choice between windows and linux for booting. If so, At the bottom of the screen does it say something like, hit e to edit this option. If so please give us the one for windows (first and foremost is to get you back up and running).

Secondary, you can put in a copy of xp etc, and go to the recovery console. You can do a fixmbr in the C:/ prompt you get. That will reinstall windows as the boot manager and hopefully get you back and working in windows at least. If that fails and windows still won't boot, try to repair the install, course thats something more of a windows issue if at the point that it won't boot after the fixmbr...

The error you are getting is that for whatever reason your ubuntu install is corrupted/wasn't completed correctly. You are missing key functions of the operating system.