[SOLVED] Missing os - can't boot from USB or anything.

I've been messing around for months trying to get my favourite linux running on my chromebook. was tinkering with Gparted yesterda and seem to have wiped everything - help please D

You maybe able to find the partition table with testdisk using a live distribution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TestDisk

Are you saying that no matter what you boot from you get the error, "Missing OS"?

Do you have any recollection of what you did with GParted? Without knowing what you did or the current status of the machine, there's not much anyone here can do to help other than guess . If you can boot any Linux from the HD, CD/DVD or flash, do that and from a terminal run this command as root and post the output:

parted -l

That should at least give us drive/partition info.

which chromebook? I have not kept up on that, but was their not an issue with chromebook whereas some do and some do not let Linux be installed onto it, at least Linux will not work on all chromebooks, or have they fixed that?

though you're saying you cannot even use a USB Stick to boot off of it now. what the .. did you do? BIOS controls the boot devices, reset it to defaults. then look at where it has the selection for boot devices and make your USB Port the first one on the list to force it to go there first to look for an OS and have a working OS on your stick to see if that will catch and boot.

If it is skipping the USB Stick and trying your HDD and you're getting Missing OS error, your MBR / boot sector is screwed up. needs fixing.

What i saw in the past on forums.gentoo.org with chromebooks was that they use some weird partitions. They do not use the well known harddrives and hardrives partitions, but something like "android based" smartphone like partitions. The hardware is well supported, it is more an issue to properly setup those partions and the bootloader, which is not that easy in my point of view.

Also the 4GB Flash usually those devices have is not much. I used around year 2000 already 20GB drives.

--

Tasks which I suggest:

Google: did anyone with the same hardware run any linux so far? any guides?

as you said you are not sure if you wiped, the linux was not working anyway, you have to start from scratch anyway.

Also I say it again, those devices do not use ordinary Harddrives / BIOS / bootloader. it differs so you need to read about it anyway.

chromebook is not "ibm based" laptop. you should know the restraints before you buy a chromebook before

So the question is... do you want to recover what you have or just start over?

Thanks for all the help. I read on another forum, a suggestion to booting from a different port IT WORKS