Problem with GRUB: partition not found. Grub Rescue??

[genoboss]

iight, so i installed Linux Mint 10 and i deleted my windows partition by accident, and it became unallocated space. so i did a testdisk and i figured i had restored the partition because the table looked different then it was before.

I rebooted my pc and it says partition not found and get a grub rescue but nothing i type works.
So i cannot get into windows or linux. I have Linux mint 10 on a flash drive

So when i booted into that and went into terminal i typed sudo fdisk -l and saw sda1 and sda2 (which is suppose to be my windows partition)

i was then told to type find /grub/stage1 but i get the error 15: file not found

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x5a23c748

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1        1828    14680064    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2   *        1828       38914   297889792    7  HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdc: 4009 MB, 4009230336 bytes
16 heads, 32 sectors/track, 15294 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 512 * 512 = 262144 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1   *           1       15294     3915248    b  W95 FAT32

[Charles4809]

As far as I can see you have lost your linux install. Your sda1 partition is now formatted as NTFS, which is a Windows filesystem. But Mint wants to be installed in ext4, a linux filesystem.
Since the Grubfiles usually are installed in the linuxpartition, they will be gone now.
You could try to mount sda2, using your Flash to boot. If you are lucky there will be readable stuff on it, but nobody can guarantee that. If that is important to you, save it somewhere else (external HDD) and start all over with your system.
If your Windows has to be installed from your HDD I suggest you use Supergrubdisk to restore the MBR to fit Windows so you van access the hidden partition with Win-restore on it.
First install Windows on the first partition, say 120 GB. Make it a primary partition and bootable, formatted as NTFS. This will be your C: drive. You can use g-parted on your flash-Mint to do this partitioning before installing. Using the GUI instead of the terminal will give you a visual idea of what is going on.
Then change the rest of your drive into an extended partition. This is only an empty container that you can fill with logical stations. This stations will be considered as partitions. If I may suggest a partition table inside your extended one it would be the following:
sda(x) - about 20 GB - ext4 filesystem -mount as / (this is your linux system and you can install Mint there)
sda(z) - about 2GB - swap (some space your memory (RAM) can use when there is need for it)
sda(y) - as much GB as you want/need - ext4 filesystem -mount as /home (this is the place where linux stores all of your documents, pictures and so on)
If there remains unallocated space, don't worry about it. It will be on the end of your disk and you can decide later what to do with it.
Remember that Linux can read from and write to NTFS, but Windows can not read from and write to ext4, unless you install some extra software in Windows. You can google for that.
Next thing to do is reinstall Mint, which will rebuild your Grub as well.
Once all of this done you will have a fine dual boot machine.

Have fun with it.