Need dual boot grub help

[lwpack]

Hello everyone. I am having some trouble. I have a vista/ubuntu dual boot. Today my ubuntu partition started acting up. I don't know what the definition of a crash is, but in any case, the ubuntu partition is unusable. I posted my error in the ubuntu distro section if you need to take a look. In addition to that, GRUB keeps messing itself up and can no longer boot either partition. I've managed to boot into windows from a live Super GRUB cd. I have two questions I was hoping someone could help me with:

1. If I delete the linux partition, will I still be able to boot into windows since grub will be erased?

2. Would it work to delete the partition, and then reinstall ubuntu again?

Thanks!

[bryansmith]

As for question one, you can boot into Windows after you delete the partition but you will have to fix your MBR with the fixmbr tool available in Windows first. You can access this from the rescue prompt (boot from the Windows CD and choose rescue).

As for question two, you don't need to delete the partition. You can just reinstall over your current installation as Ubuntu will format the partition during the install.

[abhishek456]

if you are deleting ubuntu to restore vista mbr

boot up from Vista Installation DVD and select Repair your Computer.(its below Install Icon).select Windows Vista and select Command Prompt.
execute this

bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot

close command prompt window and restart



you don't need to delete ubuntu for this reason.To restore grub with out deleting ubuntu


Boot into the live Ubuntu cd. This can be the live installer cd or the older live session Ubuntu cds.

When you get to the desktop open a terminal and enter.

sudo grub

This will get you a "grub>" prompt (i.e. the grub shell). At grub>. enter these commands

find /boot/grub/stage1

This will return a location. If you have more than one, select the installation that you want to provide the grub files.
Next, THIS IS IMPORTANT, whatever was returned for the find command use it in the next line (you are still at grub>. when you enter the next 3 commands)

root (hd?,?)

Again use the value from the find command i.e. if find returned (hd0,1) then you would enter root (hd0,1)

Next enter the command to install grub to the mbr

setup (hd0)

Finally exit the grub shell

quit

That is it. Grub will be installed to the mbr.
When you reboot, you will have the grub menu at startup.

[lwpack]

Thank you. GRUB isn't the only thing that's wrong, so I think it would be best if I just reinstalled ubuntu.

[devils casper]

yes. re-install Ubuntu in same existing partitions. Vista keeps two copies of Partition Table and if you change Partition Structure, Vista will complain about that.

EDIT: in most cases, GRUB doesn't not work even after re-install and Vista throws errors too.