[SOLVED] Uninstalled Fedora Without a windows CD, and now I'm stuck in GRUB.

[Whitewind617]

From what I understand I am screwed, which really sucks. I could borrow a cd from my friend possibly, but I kind of need access to windows back, and soon. I was wondering what my options might be at this point.

There's apparently no way to boot back into windows is what I've heard, which is just ridiculous imo, there's nothing at all I can do at that screen I'm given?

I was actually wondering, I do have a Fedora 16 cd lying around (and I have in fact booted from the cd.) Is there any chance I can use the cd to install Fedora back on to my computer, thereby fixing Grub in the process? I did just remove the thing, but w/e, if it's a viable solution I'll take it. I wanted to make sure doing so wouldn't screw me any more than I already have before hand though. So what's the deal, will that work?

[Whitewind617]

From what I understand I am screwed, which really sucks. I could borrow a cd from my friend possibly, but I kind of need access to windows back, and soon. I was wondering what my options might be at this point.

There's apparently no way to boot back into windows is what I've heard, which is just ridiculous imo, there's nothing at all I can do at that screen I'm given?

I was actually wondering, I do have a Fedora 16 cd lying around (and I have in fact booted from the cd.) Is there any chance I can use the cd to install Fedora back on to my computer, thereby fixing Grub in the process? I did just remove the thing, but w/e, if it's a viable solution I'll take it. I wanted to make sure doing so wouldn't screw me any more than I already have before hand though. So what's the deal, will that work?

[stoat]

Duplicate threads merged.

Originally Posted by Whitewind617

There's apparently no way to boot back into windows is what I've heard, which is just ridiculous imo...

If all you did was delete the Fedora partitions, and if Windows booted okay before you did that, then you should be able to emergency boot Windows now (and fix it later). I don't know what you are left with or what is on the screen you mentioned, but one way to boot Windows right now is to download and burn a Super Grub Disk. Either the current GRUB 2 version or the obsolete legacy version can find and boot Windows. The old legacy version also can repair a busted Windows boot loader by writing a syslinux boot loader into the master boot record (replacing the piece of GRUB bootstapping code there). The syslinux boot loader works similarly to the traditional MS boot loader by locating the active partition and executing its boot sector code. Sometimes in this situation, the active partition was changed by installing Linux and needs to be changed back to the Windows partition for the syslinux boot loader to work. The legacy Super Grub Disk will do that during its syslinux repair (or you can do it manually with other utilities). Anyway, later, if you are able to do it, you can borrow a Windows disk to do a normal boot loader repair.

IMO, it is better not to allow the installer of any new operating system to replace the boot loader of your main or favorite or most important operating system. The reason probably is obvious to you now. Windows installers don't offer any option for this, but most Linux installers do. For your next Linux experiment, consider choosing the boot loader option that installs the Linux system's boot loader in the first sector of its own boot partition. Finish installing and reboot. Windows will boot as though nothing happened. Then configure the Windows boot loader to boot the Linux System. For Vista and later, the free and popular app known as EasyBCD simplifies that job. For W2K and XP, the app known as BOOTPART automates the process.