edit: sorry for the title it is a typo, I ment grub [Moderator-Edit: Fixed that for you]

Hello to all,

I am new to this forum but from what I have seen so far a lot of posts deal with issues similar to mine, I have tried all the mentionned solutions but all have failed in my situation which is why I am starting a new thread.

I am not completely new to linux (I have been using Ubuntu for three years). I was disappointed by the last Ubunutu distro so I switched to Linux Mint, which led to a mistake I made:

I have a DELL latitude notebook with 5 partitions:
-a syphering partition (150Mb)
-a windows 7 partirion (100Gb)
-a swap partition (2Gb)
-a Linux Mint partition (60Gb)
-a data partition with all my files and accessible from both bootable partitions (100Gb)
It doesn't have a cd reader and I did everything from usb keys.

I used to manage my partitions and their sizes with EaseUs a windows freeware, then I installed Linux mint on a free space which I wanted to resize afterwards.

The mistake:
I resized my linux mint distro from the windows software. I know I shouldn't have and hadn't given it any thoughts about the consequences until I was done.
From then it only started on the grub rescue prompt:

error: no such partition
grub rescue>

From there I tried all the commands I could find, on this forum (which had been very usefull in the past), this is what I get:

grub rescue> ls
(hd0) (hd0,msdos6) (hd0,msdos5) (hd0,msdos2) (hd0,msdos1)

I tried to change the prefix and root option as well as the insmod setting but anything I try results in:

error: unknown filesystem

I then tried to use a bootable usb key with super grub disk 2 on it, the answer to ls changed to:

grub rescue> ls
(hd0) (hd0,msdos6) (hd0,msdos5) (hd0,msdos2) (hd0,msdos1) (hd1) (hd1,msdos1)

But I still can't get anything exept error: unknown filesystem from any command.

I would like any kind of help on how to get to the first step of a solution, I can handle myself from any point at which I can get a windows or linux loader but haven't been able to yet. I don't really mind erasing everything because I have backups for my files.

A lot of people are suggesting I get to the BIOS or use LINUX commands, I can't get my hands on any of these interfaces, the computer starts on a black screen and directly goes to the grub rescue prompt, no startup menu.

Thanks in advance to the LinuxQuestions community !

Are you getting this error only when you try to boot Mint?
Did you successfully install Mint and use it prior to resizing the partition?
Post your partition information by booting the medium from which you installed Mint and running this command from a konsole/terminal: sudo fdisk -l (Lower case Letter L in the comand)

If you can boot windows and this is a new install of Mint, it may be easier to reinstall Mint to the same partition.

Hello, thanks for your answer,

I get this message everytime I turn on the computer, I get a black screen and then the grub rescue prompt, I can't get to the loader where I can choose to load linux or windows.
The installation of Mint was successfull and it worked fine, I wanted to resise the partition because 60Gb was too much and this space could be used for data and files.

Post your partition information by booting the medium from which you installed Mint and running this command from a konsole/terminal: sudo fdisk -l (Lower case Letter L in the comand)
I can't boot anything or get my hands on a terminal.
I tried booting a usb key with mint intallation cd on it but still got the same grub rescue prompt.

If you are getting a grub rescue prompt when trying to boot from a bootable CD or flash drive then you are booting from the hard drive. You need to go in the BIOS and change to either have the CD/DVD drive as first boot priority or the usb. Some machines have options to boot usb under CD as well as hard drive so investigate and try different options. If you are using a Dell, usually you can enter the BIOS by hitting the F2 key when you see the initial screen. There should be a message for a few seconds on boot telling you which key (F2?) to hit to enter setup.

Thank you for your suggestion, the computer was indeed starting on disk and ignoring the other bootables, I got to the bios by pressing F2 (there was no message offering to do so when booting) and changed the boot priority.

Problem solved.