[PLUG] boot failure

[Denis Heidtmann]

The precursor may or may not be related.

I discovered that my wife's gmail had been accessed by an iphone on Nov,
1.  We have no iphone, and were home alone at the time listed.  So I
changed the pass word.  Then tried to open firefox.  Would not load.
Nothing would work, except the mouse pointer would move around.  Had to use
the power button to restart.  Now I get error: attempt to read or write
outside of disk 'hd0'.  Entering rescue mode.  grub rescue>

Yesterday the computer froze in a similar fashion when my wife was looking
at email in evolution.  A power switch intervention was required, but it
booted fine at that time.

So the two incidents point to hardware problems or intrusion?

I have googled for grub rescue recovery, but what I found was aimed at
people with more understanding than I have.

Are there suggestions that someone here can offer?

thanks,
-Denis