Filevault - sparsebundle operation not supported problem - please help

hi there,

I recently did something dumb and tried to clear space on my hard drive by deleting some folders that I wasn't sure of the purpose. After this when I tried to log back into my computer I got the Filevault needs repairing you can't access message.

thankfully due to some threads on this webpage I was able to regain access as a different user. I have read write access to the sparsebundle. My old files and photos are still on the corrupted sparsebundle and will not mount.

I have tried quite a few commands and have got the error message (when I click on the sparsebundle image), operatioon not supported by the socket

When I try to use disk utility to fix the problem I get 'no mountable file systems"

I have also tried going in as root user.

Does anyone out there who is savvy with this stuff know how I can retrieve all those photos.....

Many thanks,