Dear PC, I swear I won't ever mess with your partitions again if you just this once...

February 27, 2008 12:06 PM

Oh crap! While attempting to clear, reformat, and merge my ubuntu partition with my primary NTFS Windows partition, I somehow managed to give the GRUB boot-loader brain damage. Now I can't boot in to either partition need to fix this before my girlfriend comes home and sees that I've rendered her computer useless.

When I boot, I get the following error,

Booting form local disk...
GRUB Loading stage 1.5

GRUB loading, please wait...
Error 17

And it just hangs there forever, mocking and blinking... blinking and mocking... I wiped, reformatted, and merged my existing linux partition in to my windows partition while in windows using partition magic. However, upon reboot, I received that error. The file structure is intact, I checked with the liveCD, but GRUB is useless.

How can I get windows back?

posted by willie11 to computers & internet (6 answers total)

Don't panic.

Is the intent to just boot straight into Windows?

Then fixmbr.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 12:14 PM on February 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

The only windows XP cd I found was for a different computer, a laptop from 6 or 7 years ago I think. Will that do?
posted by willie11 at 12:20 PM on February 27, 2008

Oh hell, now I need to know the administrator password? I suppose there's no quick workaround for that is there? It's doubtful that my girlfriend would know that one either.
posted by willie11 at 12:24 PM on February 27, 2008

Guessed it!
Yes #1

Zed Lopez, that fixed it!
Yes #2

Relationship... saved.
posted by willie11 at 12:26 PM on February 27, 2008

now get the mods to anonymize this thread before she logs into Mefi tonight and busts you.
posted by cosmicbandito at 1:16 PM on February 27, 2008

Crazy, I just went through this exact thing last night.
posted by mindless progress at 6:27 PM on February 27, 2008