Bug: Unable to handle kernel paging request at fffffffffdffffff after Grub menu, Ubuntu 16.04

Question

I have a dual boot system installed following blog - Ubuntu 16.04 with windows 10 along with an additional swap partition. It was working fine for several months and something like no boot device detected appeared after a shutdown (I'm not sure about the reason, but I had installed somethings Software Updater suggested). On the next restart, monitor went to power saving mode and I had to shutdown using the power button. It remained the same for two other attempts, then I reconnected everything from RAM, SATA cables, power cables etc and cleaned dust all over.

Now, system shows some message like:

watchdog=1 notification connection refused

And cursor blinks on a black screen. Some type of repeated messages are printed at almost same time intervals. Starting words are:

Oops
Modules linked in
CPU
Hardware name
Task
---end trace ---

Along with some HEX codes and ? symbols.

If I tried to login with Ctrl + Alt + F*, it prints:

/dev/sda3: recovering journal
/dev/sda3: clean *** / *** files, *** / *** blocks

On the next keypress:

agetty[949]: segfault at *** ip *** sp *** error 14 in locale-archeive[***]

I have tried to see the contents from Grub menu. There is (hd0,msdos3)/ with /boot/grub and other system directories. (hd0,msdos2) and (hd0,msdos4) with /home contents and windows partitions. Remaining (hd0,msdos1) shows unknown filesystem.

How can I correct the errors? Or at least copy the contents and reinstall Ubuntu?

Update1

Booting from live USB shows:

32 bit relocation outside of kernel!
-- system halted!

Update2

On upstart:

/dev/sda3 contains a file system with errors, check forced.
Deleted inode 3670025 has zero dtime. FIXED.
/dev/sda3: 373516/9158656 files (0.2% non-contiguous), 2754152/36621093 blocks.
fsck exited with status code 1
[ 19.752709 ] upstart[1]: segfault at 5 ip ...
...
[ 19.768565 ] --- [end Kernel panic - not syncing: attempted to kill init! exitcode=0x00000000b

sounds like HDD failure. did you run a SMART test on the drive? — ravery, Jan 30 '18 at 06:15
@ravery may be, I have read somewhere the word cache. I will add the messages shown while booting live USB. — Midhun KM, Jan 30 '18 at 06:56
@KrIsHnA What did the SMART test say? Where Windows fails to boot too, that suggests a hardware issue. — wjandrea, Jan 30 '18 at 07:37
@WJAndrea I did SMART from another HDD and it said this HDD is healthy. Then I did badblocks too. Referred this link - https://askubuntu.com/a/490549/300767 — Midhun KM, Jan 30 '18 at 07:49
Even thought the result was PASSED there were errors, see https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ksvylT8_W7cMKZEAy5AqVa_VGlmFllEZHSWybNV5dG4/edit?usp=sharing — Midhun KM, Jan 30 '18 at 10:03
is this a laptop or desktop? looks like bearing age may be causing speed variation thus read errors. With desktop computers I have had success in extending drive life by mounting the drive on it's side so the disk rides on the thrust bearings, thus stabilizing disk speed. — ravery, Jan 30 '18 at 10:35
@ravery Desktop is old one, core2Duo. HDD is still under warranty, in use for last 8 months. — Midhun KM, Jan 30 '18 at 14:02
I bought a 4TB HDD, tried to install Ubuntu and got the same error as of Update1 and then realized one of four RAMs was causing error. Anyway, my fs fixing attempts ruined ntfs partitions and windows 10 is missing on grub menu. — Midhun KM, Feb 03 '18 at 11:49

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 06 '18 at 06:22

I hope someone will land here frustrated the way I was, so save yourself before trying to recover a bad file system / boot device error.

I was having a bad RAM at one of the 4 slots. So, I would like to remind you to do a memtest from the grub menu before you proceed anything with Harddisk drive.

Also, you may be lucky enough to use the error-free part of RAM, read section :-

BADRAM setting in Grub2

If you proceed to do more tests with HDDs, you may end up with file system errors which are not easy to recover.

see the comment here

Bug: Unable to handle kernel paging request at fffffffffdffffff after Grub menu, Ubuntu 16.04

Update1

Update2

1 Answers1