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Martinus Scriblerus wrote: > I have an Acer Aspire netbook that was dual booting Ubuntu 9.04 and > XP. I hadn't set up as big a partition for Ubuntu as I meant to so I > decided to delete the Ubuntu partitions and reinstall. > > So I screwed up. When I try to start I get a grub error and it hangs. > No matter, I have Ubuntu on a memory stick ready to install - and can > boot from it. When I try to install I don't see my hard drive, just > the memory stick and an SD card that is also plugged in. > > My file system is still there and accessible from Ubuntu. Can anybody > advise me how to continue without, I hate to say it, deleting XP. > Ideally restore the ability to boot as an XP system then install > Ubuntu from scratch. > If you can get access to a USB CD/DVD drive, boot from a Windows XP CD, run Recovery Console and run the command fixmbr. That will erase grub and replace it with the Windows XP boot loader so you can then boot up Windows XP. If you can't get hold of a drive then you could try extracting the MBR of a Windows XP machine using a Linux live CD and then restoring it on your Aspire. To do this, boot into Linux and run the following command: dd if=/dev/sda of=/path/to/file/sda.mbr bs=512 count=1 Copy the sda.mbr to some sort of removable storage (USB stick etc). On your Aspire, boot into Linux (again from a USB stick or something) and then do the opposite of the other command: dd if=/path/to/file/sda.mbr of=/dev/sda Just modify /path/to/file/ to point to where your removable storage is, or alternatively point it to ~/ to save it in your home directory. Hope this helps. Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html