Grub messed up on dual boot machine - can't boot live usb

Posted by Sam on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by Sam
Published on 2012-09-20T01:23:31Z Indexed on 2012/09/20 3:51 UTC
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grub2

I have a laptop on which I had Win 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 installed. The hdd has two partitions (one primary and one extended). Grub wasn't loaing initially so I ran the boot disk repair tool which seemed to sort it out. However, I mistakenly removed python (long story) from the Ubuntu OS and this obviously messed up Ubuntu a lot. So I decided to reintsall both Win7 and Ubuntu 12.04 in an attempt to get things back fresh. Win 7 went fine, but now when I try and use the Live USB to install Ubuntu I get:

error: no such device: grub rescue >

I guess grub is still there despite the Win 7 reinstall and it can't find the partition for Ubuntu (which I deleted prior to the fresh install).

I have tried fixmbr in windows console and the boot-repair-disk utility, but no joy. I cannot boot the live usb so no access to linux.

A real mess.

Any suggestions from the community?

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