Fixing Grub from rescue mode
 

Hi.

I got my wife to try Linux, so we set her machine up to dual boot with Windows. After a few weeks, she decided not to use Linux, so we deleted the Linux partitions using Gparted on a USB drive and resized the NTFS partition, under the apparently mistaken impression that Grub would detect that there was now no other operating system. When we rebooted, we got error: no such partition, followed by a grub rescue prompt. I've never worked with Grub directly before, so I have no idea what to do at this point.

Can someone help me out with this? I know it's not strictly a Linux question, but it is a Grub question, so I'm hoping that counts.

If I did not have a windows disk I would make a small say 200 meg partition and install Puppy or Tiny Me on it to dual boot with windows.

Thanks for that suggestion. It's not perfect, but at least she can boot to Windows now.

Couple of points.

Grub will not automatically spot the changes to partitions and installs. That's the sort of behaviour that might be done by the program that sets Grub up.

As you've probably realised Grub comes back with a "no such partition" error because half the Grub program resides in the Mater Boot Record and the other half in the partition you just removed. Following Larry's advice will rebuild a complete operational version of Grub.

If you really only want to have Windows (and I understand that some people do) then you're best bet is to use the Windows install disk to "repair the MBR". Here are some details here.

Good luck.

Unfortunately, there is no Windows install disk. It's a new computer, came with Windows preinstalled and no disk. I installed Puppy and used the bootloader to boot into the Windows Recovery partition, and am now running recovery to see if that'll restore the MBR to whatever Microsoft uses.

I HAD been thinking about setting my computer up to dual boot to see if Windows 7 is really that much better than XP (the last Windows I used before switching to Linux), but I've changed my mind about that. I like having an OS on disk, just in case. And besides, I don't want to pay for something I'm probably not going to use.

Thanks for your help.

In the future if you want to try a dual boot make a backup of your mbr before you install your distro then you can always restore if you do not want to keep the install. There are plenty of articles out there on backing up mbr.