Big boo-boo deleting parition

[enderbean]

So I was very excited to start using linux (ubuntu 7.10) on my laptop so I wouldn't have to deal with Vista. However, school caught up with me and I haven't had time to work with my linux as much as I'd like. This is where I made the most noobish mistake... I simply deleted the partition that had linux on it. So now I have GRUB trying to load up but all that happens is I get "Error 17" and all I can do is restart.

I don't have much experience with laptops. I thought maybe I could just take the drive out, set the jumpers to slave and hook it up to another computer, repartition and reinstall linux, and then go through the motions again correctly. However upon removing the drive I can't seem to find any jumpers (such as in PCs). So now what do I do?

If it's worth mentioning I have a HP Pavilion dv6000.

Any help is immensely appreciated, I need this laptop for school. I have a desktop to write papers and what not, but I take all my notes on the lappy, and I just started an Astronomy lab class where I'm the only person with a laptop, so I'll be uploading pictures to my laptop if I can get it to work.

Thanks so much for your time.

[daark.child]

You can use the super grub disk to remove grub. Its a very small live distro, so it won't take long to download.

[enderbean]

So what do I do with the "boot" files? Do I put them into an .iso on a disc or flash drive and boot from it? I tried just putting the files on a flash drive and booting from it but that wasn't it.

I kinda know what I'm talking about but still rather noobish as you may be able to tell, but just point me in the right direction and I'll head on my merry way as best I can.

[Jonathan183]

The easiest way is to burn the iso image to cd.

[oz]

Check this link for information on how to properly burn an ISO image to a CD/DVD:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ins...ll-cd-dvd.html

[enderbean]

Ok I'm still running into problems... though I think I may know why. I had put in my Windows CD to try and run the recovery thing, but I deleted my recovery partition so that didn't work for me.. I clicked a little faster than I read and my computer started to format the drive. I canceled after 2% but I don't know if it undid what it had started... so have I *screwed* myself over completely and will I just have to continue my format? I really really really really hope not because I have notes on that computer and it would really save my life to be able to at least get the files off that drive.

Could someone possibly tell me where to go in SuperGrub to reload the different grub into the MBR? I thought I found it but it wasn't working so maybe if someone could tell me I can see if I was doing it right. Thanks for all of your help so far.

[devils casper]

Ok I'm still running into problems... though I think I may know why. I had put in my Windows CD to try and run the recovery thing, but I deleted my recovery partition so that didn't work for me.. I clicked a little faster than I read and my computer started to format the drive. I canceled after 2% but I don't know if it undid what it had started... so have I *screwed* myself over completely and will I just have to continue my format? I really really really really hope not because I have notes on that computer and it would really save my life to be able to at least get the files off that drive.

I think you have messed up Partition Table. First of all, check if Partitions are intact or not. Boot up from Ubuntu CD, open Terminal and execute this

sudo fdisk -l

Post output here.

[enderbean]

Ok here's what I got:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x33cb3a7d

   Device Boot      Start          End      Blocks    Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1         4179    33567786     7  HPFS/NTFS

[devils casper]

/dev/sdal * 1 4179 33567786 7 HPFS/NTFS

According to output of fdisk -l command, you HD has one partition only.
Check what is in that partition.
Exeucte this

mkdir sda1
sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/sda1 sda1 -o defaults,umask=0
cd sda1
ls

btw, its /dev/sda1 (one) not sdal.

[enderbean]

Ok this is what came up, some were highlighted, I'll mark those with an asterisk in case it's important:

APPL.ZIP*
boot*
bootmgr
CSPU.DAT
DPART.TXT
global*
INFO.BOM
MCPP*
sources*
ST_RP*
SwSetup*
System Recovery*
System.sav*
USWV32HP*
Vista.32*
Vista.64*
vista.all*
WINDOWS*

Thanks for mentioning the difference between sda1 and sdal. I noticed that's what I typed in terminal and almost ended up posting the "invalid option" and "usage" bit that it gave me.