A Fellow Pilot in Need of Help

[TAV1702]

Folks I have an issue here I need a hand with.

I have aquired a laptop that I really did not want anything to do with. Long story short, the kid had it and it had Windows Xp on it. Not sure what or how he did it, but he installed Ubuntu. Not sure what version. Then he decided he hated Ubuntu and did a fdisk and deleted every single partition. Now the laptop will not do anything. When it boots it goes directly to

error: no such partition

Grub Rescue>

the only command that will work is ls when typing that it shows (hd0) and then goes back to Grub Rescue>

the other command that works is set and when trying that it says

prefix=(hd0,1)/boot/grub

root=hd0,1

grub rescue>

I set the bios to boot from cd. It will not boot any cd what so ever. I have no option at all from booting via a usb drive. So I pretty much have a laptop sitting here that will do absolutely nothing at all. I have searched every forum I could find and they all tell me how to fix it with a working partition on the drive. Duhhhh! It will not boot from a cd for me to create a working partition. lol All it will do on boot is do this

error: no such partition

Grub Rescue>

I am in dire need here folks. I am hoping one of you linux gurus can help me. I want it gone and when it is, I need to be able to reinstall windows so I can ship this PC off to my daughter and call it good. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Ray

[mark1million]

Hi Ray, if you set the bios you will be able to boot from CD and format the drive, depending how old the laptop is you could boot from floppy.... yes showing my age now or usb, my recommendation would be download ubuntu on to usb and try to boot from that, you can boot on the dongle so no files are written, you also have powerful access to disk tools from there, but if he has deleted the partitions then there is nothing there anyway.

Sometimes you have to press F8 to select the boot devise on some pc's maybe that's worth a try.

[TAV1702]

Hi Mark. I have gotten in to the Bios and set it to boot from cd rom. that is why it is amazing to me that it is not booting from the cd at all. No matter what cd I try. I also do not have the option in the bios to boot from a usb device. There is no floppy on the laptop. It is actually only about 3 or 4 years old. All it has is the dvd drive. I even went so far as to grab a live ubuntu cd and tried to boot from it with no luck either. I know the cd rom does work. I saw it in working condition before this whole fiasco.

I have literally tried everything I can think of I can get no further than the Grub rescue prompt.

[mark1million]

The only other thing you could do is remove the hard drive and if you have the ability then format it by using another pc with a caddy devise, you could then either load a windows image or ubuntu image on to it for when its back in the laptop to build.

Strange one though about that CD drive not booting.

[Angel Air]

Hi Tav,

It could be that because the whole thing has been wiped from the hard drive it has lost all the drivers for the CD Drive.

You can get it to work 2 ways....

1. Do what mark has said and remove the hard drive and format it and make sure when you have done that when you put it back in the laptop that you set the boot priority in the bios to 1st boot boot device = CD Rom 2nd Boot Device Hard drive.

2. If it is a case of the drivers not being available use an external USB CD ROM drive as the USB drivers are loaded up from the bios but the drivers for the internal drive is loaded from the hard drive.

Hope this helps.

Scott

[TAV1702]

I will probably have to remove it and hope I can format it that way. I have no usb external drives to try to do anything like that. I just hope the hd will hook up to my PC.

[TAV1702]

Ok I got the hard drive out only to realize that it will not hook up to any pc that I own. I am going to have to bite the bullet and take it in and have it formatted I suppose.

Thanks for the replies fellers. I appreciate it. Oh and Mark, I finally caught on to what you were referring to when you referenced a "Caddy" lol I really need to get me one of those. I bet they would come in real handy. You are referring to a USB external case correct?