Urgent
 

I tried to to install Kubuntu on a usb port to make it portable. I used my buddies laptop and when the program asked if i wanted to erase the Hard drive I made it erase the USB port and install on there. When I was finished windows would no load up from the Hard drive on the Laptop and the message I got was a code and grub rescue. How can I recover Windows with out erasing the files?

Hello and welcome to LQ. Please use something descriptive for your subject line instead of "Urgent." Using such a subject will not get your thread the attention it needs to answer your question.

As far as your actual question, what has happened is that most likely you need to plug your flash drive in to be able to boot grub and boot into your OS. Can you please confirm this for me? It seems like you might have borked grub and it is trying to read the flash drive, and not being plugged in might do it.

Try to use better titles in the first place. The matter that is urgent to you is not urgent for anyone else here. Members here are volunteers and help others when they get time. If you want immediate help, go for a paid support. http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html. A must read for new members.

If you can give some information on what is going on clearly, we can help you. I do not much understand what you mean to say. What I could make out was you installed Kubuntu on USB drive which is fine. But where did you install grub boot loader? External usb drive or the internal disk? Are you booting from the usb? What have you tried so far? Can you even boot Kubuntu? If you can, you seem to have installed grub on usb drive and you need to keep usb drive plugged in to boot the system.

I am sorry for the title i realized after that it was bad to use that title it is just i am not happy with what i did.

Can you please answer our questions and not explain why you didn't choose a different title? Thank you, we both would greatly appreciate it.

And linuxlover.chaitanya, thanks for the smart-questions link. I remember seeing that a while back and had no luck finding it :p

To fix the Windows bootloader, boot from a Windows disk and select R for Recovery. At the command line, type:

or I may have the slash backwards:

Its been awhile since I had to do that. This is assuming you didn't accidentally erase the hard drive instead of the flash drive.

Ok this is step by step the process I took:

Put Kubuntu Installer on a USB port.
I then went into the system setup and changed the boot menu to first read the USB drive.
I also had another USB drive in the other slot in the Laptop
I then saved changes and the computer rebooted and brought me to installer
From there I went through the steps
When I got to disk setup i i choose to erase the files and install Kubuntu on to the empty USB drive. Everything went well, but i think i came into a problem when the installation was done it went to a Kubuntu installed background and i pulled out the USB port before it rebooted. When i did that I got a coded screen with blue loading dots. Then the computer shutdown. I then tok out the USB port that has Kubuntu installed on it and try to load windows to make sure that windows was not erased.
When it went to load i got the message:
error: no such device: 10e5ad54-bf38-46cf-9aac-27c6e2b6654b.
grub rescue>

I have restored all the default settings in the motherboard setup and I still get the same message. I have tried to go into the boot menu and boot from the built in hard drives but they are saying that no operating system is found.

I have put in the USB that has Kubuntu installed on it and it does not load.

You probably have a borked grub. You still have not cleared the doubt. Where did you install the grub? Internal drive or the usb drive?

I assume that it really is awhile since you used that, that was the way to fix the MBR back in the days of Windows 98.
To do it with Windows XP, but from your Windows-CD, start the recovery-console, login to your Windows-installation and typeTo do that on Vista and 7 you also have to start the recovery console, but the command to issue is This way, at least your Windows should work again, after that we can work out why your Kubuntu doesn't start.

filbert,
post the output of the following command:
fdisk -l

Regards.

I am pretty sure I installed everything on the USB drive, I made sure that when it gave me the option to install on the Internal or the USB I chose the USB.

---------- Post added 02-22-11 at 06:26 AM ----------

I have tried that command but I always get the message of "Command unknown"

If you can boot into Ubuntu, you would want to update your grub. If you can not boot even into Ubuntu, your best bet is to use a Live disk for Ubuntu and use it to reinstall grub.

You may have to use "su" or "sudo"
My computer I have to enter "sudo fdisk -l"