Need help guys, I made a bootable USB drive and got Ubuntu version 16.4... just because I have and old HP zv6100 with only 512MB RAM!I had to upgrade the OS from Windows XP pro to Win7 via bootable ISO USB drive, I had that drive but it got lost..I think it got stolen, anyways I need massive help to get this program working!! any criticism, insights, work arounds, replacements, etc. etc, thanks guys and I'm glad to be here!
Oh and BTW, I'm stuck because I can't seem to boot Windows now, I'm great at these kinda things but I'm truly stumped. ��

Welcome to LinuxQuestions.

Does the USB drive boot ok?
Did you actually install Ubuntu and when the system rebooted you saw the tainted message?

The "can't boot Windows now" might be either caused by the installer overwriting the Windows boot loader which failed to complete successfully or you selected to overwrite Windows which means it no longer exists or both.

Hey bud thanks for getting back to me, on the question about does the drive boot? Not to Ubuntu OS, I can get the recovery to boot with no avail, I've tried to find windows OS but can't find it, I've been trying to at least try to put another version of Ubuntu that's on the USB drive but I can't get back to the initial options, I had to download 16.4.xxx, all I know is I need help majorly,I'm really great at these "basic" program's, I'm not worried if I lost Windows OS, it's just a play machine anyway but I want to fix it for my brother, he wants it for some reason because he can hardly use his smartphone! But any help would be greatly appreciated.��

Instead of Ubuntu I would try antiX. It is a lightweight and current distribution.

https://antixlinux.com/

To write the ISO file to a USB drive the Windows utility of choice is Rufus.

https://rufus.ie/en/

You can read the manual here:
https://mxlinux.org/manuals/

Since you do not care about recovering Windows just use the entire disk for installation.

So am I supposed to burn this iso to use my phone? Because I can't get my CPU to boot up, it's in a soft brick.

Also this the program I used http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

I did not know that you did not have another PC. You can try to reinstalling from scratch or just the boot loader from the live USB.

https://www.fosslinux.com/4477/how-t...-usb-drive.htm

Man I can't mount my drive to run commands, I did get it to mount to my OnePlus 9 via a usb A to usb C dongle and all it told me was that my drive is damaged...?? I have attached a pic of the GRUB and some commands I entered and thought it was going to work.

I've managed to get the jpg to upload after some nifty cropping and such, can you understand the pic? Because code is my one downfall. Ugh

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grub is the linux boot loader and your currently running its rescue mode which has a very limited number of commands.
The correct grub command for finding /boot is
ls (hd0,msdos1)
msdos1 could be your swap partition. Try
ls (hd0,mdos2)

https://phoenixnap.com/kb/grub-rescue

Can you boot the USB flash drive to a running live Ubuntu?

I had all the installers put the program on the computer but when it finished the install it would never boot up..?? Idk what, why, and how it will not boot, I have a old HP zv6100 computer, is there anything besides F10, F12, ESC. or any of the other button commands I can do? I've used SHIFT+1 etc etc

Since your in grub rescue mode you obviously booted the USB drive successfully and installed something to the hard drive so I am not sure why you seem to be having problems with booting the USB drive now. I assume that you downloaded the live desktop version versus the installer.

I do not know what happened either but what makes this difficult is that the only real troubleshooting tool you have is the USB drive.

I am unfamiliar with the HP but usually the BIOS can be typically accessed by either the del, esc, F2, F10, F12 keys. Sometimes the BIOS boot screen will display the desired key. I assume the BIOS was configured to boot from USB first.

See thing is Mike is it when in bias mode it does show the Linux code for you know the the bias and whenever I try and put the the USB disc in front of the hard drive it boots but it goes to a screen where it's black and it has the blinking dash up on the top left of the thing unless I put it in recovery mode itself so I really don't know what the hex going on with it obviously you know I've put the software on the internal hard drive it's that you know obviously the USB is the boot disc so I'm I'm really stomping I usually am pretty good at all this I'm going to go and read what you sent me just the last message and see what's up with that so I mean I appreciate the help and if you can think of anything else just you know shoot me a message again but I appreciate all your help my friend I'm going to see if I can get this right if not it's okay though I got my other computer's coming tomorrow maybe I'll fix tomorrow when I get my computer and maybe it was a godson that you and I had interacted today thanks man.
Sorry for the double words I was dictating and that usually always mess with some words, lol��

Here is what I'm getting now from the ESC boot, how can there be no such device?? I'm stumped and bad thing is I can't enter the command prompt to try and sort this beast out!😈

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It should be much easier with another computer. Download antiX and try from scratch.