boot busybox kernel panic load error

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but this appears to be a "regular" (non-security) bug. I have unmarked it as a security issue since this bug does not show evidence of allowing attackers to cross privilege boundaries nor directly cause loss of data/privacy. Please feel free to report any other bugs you may find.

I had this problem and kainbox's solution #18 at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1601810&page=2 worked for me. downloaded slax live cd, which does not try to mount anything, then ran e2fsck -y -f -v /dev/sda2 and got the system back next boot. NB: had to copy files from the slax dir on slax cd over to a hard drive first.

Hello,
countless terminal commands in Ubuntu didn't help me either. This happened to me once Ubuntu was "illegally" shut down.

Running e2fsck in Slax, then following Richard Path's command did, though! I am so happy! :D

I followed Richard's idea. However, I get this message:
e2fsck -y -f -v /dev/sda1
e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1:
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

Per the request, I tried e2fsck -b 8193:
e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/sda1
e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1:
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

I have also tried e2fsck -p /dev/sda1 and have received the same result. An interesting thing is that it mentions ext2. I have Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and so I have ext4. I wonder if I'm supposed to specify somewhere that it's ext4.
Thanks in advance!

Oooff! Got it working! Needed the fdisk -l to get the right pathway correct (it was hda1, not sda1). Funny, when I looked at Disk Manager under a LiveCD it said it was sda1. Got everything working now though! Thanks!