I have an asus eeepc 1015px. I installed crunchbang alongside my windows starter using usb, and it was generally working. Since I could not get some drivers with crunchbang I was going to install ubuntu instead. However I stupidly deleted the partitions of my crunchbang install but left the mbr and windows intact (as far as I can tell).

Now when I start I get the grub rescue prompt. When I try to do anything through a live usb (since I do not have a cd-rom drive) I get only a black screen with a blinking cursor.

Is there anything I can do to save this??

I really don't have anything on my windows installation I need, so if I can just wipe the hard dive that's fine by me.

Repair should be fine, buy a usb stick and borrow a computer from buddy with download a live cd and install to usb. I believe you can also download one directly from unetbootin for your usb.

The problem is I have tried multiple live cds installed to usb. I have tried both Universal USB installer and unetbootin. I have done this with Debian 6.0.2, Ubuntu 9.10, 10.04, and 11.4, dsl 4.4.10, lucid puppy, ubcd, rescatux, and even windows98.

For all of the above I either get a black screen with a curor prompt, or a "Missing operating system." error.

I have a Windows machine to create my usb drives and they are displayed under grub rescue as a seperate hd. However, when I try to ls them under grub rescue I get "error: unknown filesystem"

Thanks for the quick initial response

The distros that you have tried, did you check to see if they would work in other computers?

Does that mean you were booting with Grub and windows and now you cannot boot anything or are you still able to boot windows?
If crunchbang was "generally working" why not install it again. At least then you will be able to use the computer until you find something else that works. That's quite a diverse selection you tried, surprised they didn't work, well some of them anyway.

I was just messing with some partitions on my system and ended up in grub-rescue.

Anyhow, from grub-rescue I did a set root=(hd2,msdos6) to point grub to my third drive, sixth partition, and then did a configfile /<tab> to list the files in that partition, and found a grub.cfg file in /boot/grub/grub.cfg

As soon as grub had a proper cfg file, it popped the menu and let me boot.

My point is just that you may be in grub-rescue because your grub.cfg isn't in the place that the grub image expectes it to be found, so, if you can find it "by hand," you may be able to boot and fix your problem by doing a grub-install on your default boot drive.

Larry -

I checked and surprisingly enough they were not working properly on the host machine I am using to type this. Next step from this I'll be using the USB Startup Disk creator tool on my ubuntu virtualbox. Hopefully this time I can get a working usb.

yanck -

I was using grub to boot to either windows or crunchbang. I was having no luck getting crunchbang to accept my ethernet adapter. It would work for wired internet for about 10 min and would then shut off. Also the wireless was not working and with living on a college campus and the many varied wireless networks I would prefer a distro with a nicer interface for wireless.

PTrenholme -

None of the partitions still on the disk have a /boot/grub/grub.cfg All of them have the "error: unknown filesystem". So unfortunately for me that won't work.

As soon as I can get a usb that will actually boot then I should be in the clear. Thanks for the old "duh you should try this" Larry, I needed that...

Problem solved, can now boot into ubuntu and to windows 7 starter.

Be warned, on Windows 7 64-bit Universal USB Installer and Unetbootin will not work on creating a bootable usb.

Thank you all.

Could you expand on that last post a little more ?.
I have used Win7 Ultimate (64-bit) to create several Ubuntu liveCD that work fine on a (crappy) Gateway netbook using the Universal installer (1.8.6.1 from the exe name).

Sure! At least for me I used Universal installer 1.8.6.4 and for whatever reason creating a Ubuntu liveCD was not working properly.(This is for my Asus EEE PC 1015px.) It's more to let people who may have this problem in the future know that this version may not work.