Penny Arcade Forums› Games and Technology› Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern
As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options

killing a GRUB

-AKIRA--AKIRA- Registered User regular
edited August 2009 in Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern
I've recently purchased a new Windows machine. I decided I would like to install Mythbuntu just to play around with it. After deleting the Mythbuntu partition, I get Error 17 everytime I boot the PC. My Vista partition is still there, and I've used GParted to make sure the boot flag is on the proper partition, but I can't get rid of the GRUB 17 error.

My partitions are arranged thusly:
hd0/sda1 15 gig 'recovery' partition, NTFS
hd0/sda2 100 gig Vista partition, NTFS boot partition
hd0/sda3 ~600 gig data partition, NTFS

There was a tiny partition that I figured GRUB was living on, but I used GParted to delete it... I think. That may have been a bad idea. Also, the computer did not come with a Vista install CD. If only I had one of those, I think this would only be a minor problem.

All I want to do is boot into my Vista partition and learn to live with that. Any help is appreciated.

-AKIRA- on

Posts

  • Options
    DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Boot your Windows CD.

    Go into the recovery console.

    Run fixmbr.

    edit: an explanation: when you wiped out your Linux partition, you wiped out the files Grub reads to load the boot menu, so it gives you an error on startup because it doesn't know what hard drives have what operating system on them.

    Daedalus on
  • Options
    -AKIRA--AKIRA- Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    If only I had one of those laying around I would gladly do just that. Acer doesn't think people deserve a Vista CD with purchase.

    -AKIRA- on
  • Options
    DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Download and burn one; you have a valid license, right?

    Daedalus on
  • Options
    -AKIRA--AKIRA- Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    I do, and I guess that'll have to work. Off to find a copy of Vista somewhere, thanks.

    -AKIRA- on
  • Options
    DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    To make sure it doesn't have any viruses or buggy "activation cracks" or whatever: the .iso I got directly from MSDN of Vista SP1 has an md5sum of "e4ce0b193d94279e4dce1098d6b5afeb" for the 64-bit version and "b09267740ddd1a08d80b04ec6bbc232a" for the 32-bit version.

    Daedalus on
  • Options
    -AKIRA--AKIRA- Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Yeah, I'm not finding it too easy to find a legit Vista install disk. I had an old Win2k disk laying around, but it didn't play nice with the new computer. It complained about an invalid boot device or something. Fixing this with only an OS X laptop is no easy task. Why do companies not ship install disks anymore?

    Is there another boot disk I could try with fixmbr attached? I've got The Ultimate Boot CD, but that didn't help too much. There are several boot managers on there, but lately I've only been able to boot to my 'recovery' partition for some reason. I haven't been able to get into my Vista partition in a day or so.

    -AKIRA- on
  • Options
    DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Well, option 2 would be to put some small Linux distro, maybe overwriting that useless "recovery" partition, just to keep Grub working, I guess. It's stupid, but it'll work.

    Daedalus on
  • Options
    -AKIRA--AKIRA- Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Well I've downloaded Ubuntu and booted to it. I've tried to make use of ms-sys, which is a Linux utility that claims to make a bootable MBR. I used it, and it seems to have gotten rid of GRUB. Now the machine just reboots in a loop unless I boot to some disk. I still can't boot into my Vista partition :x

    -AKIRA- on
  • Options
    FremFrem Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    You need this. It's essentially the Windows installer disk minus all the stuff you need to install Windows. It still has all the recovery tools included though; the chances that fixmbr is included are pretty close to 100%.

    Fire up thine bit torrent, burn yonder iso, and boot thine computer UP.

    Frem on
    Steam | Blog | Mastodon | BoardGameGeek | Game library
  • Options
    -AKIRA--AKIRA- Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    That is EXACTLY what I've been looking for. Thank you, thank you thank you. It worked wonderfully!

    -AKIRA- on
  • Options
    FremFrem Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Glad to be of service. :)

    Frem on
    Steam | Blog | Mastodon | BoardGameGeek | Game library
Sign In or Register to comment.
Penny Arcade Forums› Games and Technology› Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern