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Originally Posted by jjr87
Until I can get my hands on one, any intangible solutions?
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Hello jjr87,
Probably. One idea is the Super Grub Disk. It can boot your Vista system just like GRUB did before you busted it by deleting the Fedora partitions. After Vista boots, you can try Startup Repair in Vista (I don't use Vista). The Super Grub Disk is a free utility that does other useful things. It can also restore MS-style boot code to the master boot record that locates the active partition and executes its boot sector code (like all MS boot strapping code does). So it might also repair your MBR (see the P.S. below). The Super Grub Disk is not a beautiful GUI app. It's a simple menu-driven app with a maze of menus with choices that could have been named better IMO. But it has built-in help and a nice wiki. Anyway, after you learn it, it's handy to have around.
If Vista boots with the Super Grub Disk, but Startup Repair can't fix the master boot record (again, I don't use Vista), then the free and popular utility EasyBCD can do it. Download it and install it in Vista after you boot Vista with the Super Grub Disk. Fix the MBR. You can also use EasyBCD to configure Vista to boot Linux if you ever try one again. That is its main purpose. Sounds like that would be better for you.
Another idea if the Super Grub Disk can't boot Vista is the Vista Recovery Disk that can be downloaded from Neosmart.
FYI Stuff...
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Originally Posted by jjr87
Can I get rid of this problem through the Grub prompt..?
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Nah. Even if you hadn't deleted the Fedora boot partition, I can't think of anything GRUB or Fedora can do about this. This problem is an MS issue.
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Originally Posted by jjr87
i've tried the find /boot/stage1 or whatever it is but it says "file not found"
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That's because it was in the boot partition which you deleted.
The stage1 file that was in the /boot/grub directory is really just an image file that GRUB uses when it installs the "real" stage1 in a master boot record or a partition boot sector. GRUB embeds the sector address of the next stage in the stage1 that it creates from the stage1 image file in /boot/grub. You still have the "real" stage1 in your master boot record. But the GRUB shell's find command will not find that stage1 because it's not a file in a filesytem. Those various stage1_5 files that were in the /boot/grub directory are also image files that GRUB uses when it installs the "real" stage1.5 in the normally unused DOS Compat Area which is the 62 sectors immediately following the master boot record (which is the very first sector). Your first partition starts at the 63rd sector. Unlike those other stage files in /boot/grub, the stage2 file that was in your /boot/grub directory was the "real" stage2 that participated in the GRUB boot process. It reads the grub.conf file and creates the GRUB boot menu. But all of this stuff is gone. The grub> prompt is probably being created by stage1.5 when it fails to find stage2.
P.S.: Fedora 11 changes the active partition. Before you installed Fedora, Vista was the active partition. MS master boot record code works by examining the partition table to find the active partition, and then it loads and executes the active partition's boot sector code. It's how MS systems boot. Since forever. If you try to restore the MBR with a third party utility such as the Super Grub Disk and it fails to work, it might be this issue. You can use your favorite partition manager to change the active partition back to the Vista partition (or the partition with its boot loader files...they're not always one and the same). MS utilities will probably do this job as part of the MBR repair. You also can probably do it with Vista's Disk Management utility after booting with the Super Grub Disk.
Linear Mode
