Error: so such partition. grub rescue>?

Question

First, sorry for the badly formatted question line.

The Background
I am running on a Toshiba laptop from five years ago with a CD drive (I have a feeling that this will help). It did not come with a Windows XP disc, just a "System recovery" disc which says in its instructions that it will format my hard drive and return it to factory state. I really do not want to do this. I also do not have access to a Linux live cd at the moment. I can get one, if needed.

The Backstory
As I have said, It is five years old. As may be expected, it runs extremely slow. I tried to fix this by using Ubuntu. I used a live CD and made a partition to house it. it was still slow, if not slower. I went back into windows and deleted that partition and it was left to unallocated space. in a process connected to thee unallocated space, I had to restart. it tried to access GRUB, which I believe to have been found on the Ubuntu partition, which now contained nothing. It brought up:

error: no such partition.
grub rescue>

The Situation
nothing works at this point. I will try a live CD and installing grub from there (which I don't know how to do; it would be helpful if you could tell me how), but that will take a long time to procure. Please tell me if there is any way to fix this without a usb or live cd linux?

again, sorry for the terrible formatting.

I will post as many times as necessary.

please tell me how to do it instead of linking to something else.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You can try the following:

When downloading your Linux ISO (Yes you will have to use some kind of rescue disk and linux is free)...

find and download Ubuntu Rescue Remix from

http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/files/URR/iso/UbuntuRescueRemix1104.iso



You can use most versions of Linux for the following including Ubuntu.



use irfrarecorder to burn your iso to disk http://infrarecorder.org/

or if your laptop supports usb booting use unetbootin to put your iso on a usb drive :

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/



***When you have your ubuntuRescueRemix USB or CD ready and booted***:



First run gparted adjust your partitions so that you have all ntfs or fat file space or windows won't access that space.

-> You need to note the Drive volume and name when you are adjusting partitions.

Write them down. This represents the drive you want to install your boot loader into.



When using this as a path for grub install you change the number and letter by subtracting one from the drive letter(a=1 b=2) so that a would change to 0 and b is 1 - the number you just subtract one.



Example:

my chosen root partition in parted is sda1 so my grub path for the boot loader will be hd0,0

I use that path for the rest of these commands- replace it for your own commands.



At the command line type(one command per line):

sudo grub

root (hd0,0)

setup (hd0)

quit

sudo reboot



That should fix it.

Answer 2

You will somehow have to boot into DOS and run the command FDISK /MBR, if the laptop has a floppy drive then you can get the files to create a boot disk from here - http://www.bootdisk.com/



if you don't have a floppy disk then try Ultimate Boot CD - http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

you'll need to check out the right software to use



If you decide to bo with the live cd option I'd suggest Ubuntu and use the tutorial here - http://www.arsgeek.com/2008/01/15/how-to-fix-your-windows-mbr-with-an-ubuntu-livecd/



Easiest solution would be to borrow an XP disk from someone, boot from it, select R to repair using the recovery console, once you have the DOS prompt just type in fixmbr.

Answer 3

Why won't be able to you boot from a stay ubuntu disk? Cant you adjust the boot series to CD-ROM first? besides, gazing the appropriate grub help, do no longer you should set the prefix to (hd0, msdos1) or (hd0,msdos2) on the grounds that msdos5 isn't there anymore?