thanks for all the advice: still no joy as yet, though
when i boot from the CD, it gives me about 5 options, most of which
involve a new installation. there is, however, the option of executing a
shell command.
when i do that, it tells me i'm about to run ash (whatever that might be)
and that the 'hard disc filesystems are mounted on /target'.
i then get what looks like an ordinary prompt, each line beginning with ~#
can anyone give me a list of commands i need to type? (with as much detail
as possible, as i'm a relative newbie, and still trying to get to grips
with this!)