Dual-boot computer won't boot without external hard drive

Posted by FrankP on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by FrankP
Published on 2012-08-21T15:32:55Z Indexed on 2012/10/05 3:51 UTC
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I have Ubuntu loaded on my external HDD.

I tried to unplug the external drive so that this way I could run Windows as the default OS to boot when the computer turns on, but it gives me an error.

I need to know how I can make it so that when my computers boots it stops saying Error: no such device: (a whole bunch of numbers and letters) then it says grub rescue>_.

If I plug the external HDD in, and I let Ubuntu run the boot process, then it gives me a list of OS's/ HDD's to choose from and Windows 7 is there.

The only problem is that I want Windows be my default OS, not the other way around.

P.S. I have found that I dislike Ubuntu because I can't even figure out how to install the necessary programs to learn how to start writing Ruby On Rails. So installing it was a waste of my time, in my opinion. Now that I have it on the external hard drive, I will leave it installed though. I just dont want to have to keep that external drive plugged in to my computer all the time.

Thank you a ton to whoever can help me!


Thank you for the detail'd instructions. I am doing my best to follow you and it makes sense when I read it but, Rescatux is not doing what you said it would. None of the options you said would appear are not there. On my screen there is 4 options when MBR run's none look familiar and when I picked the best possible option based on my educated guesses it said success. I tried to restart my computer and it said Please insert windows recovery disc and hit enter. Problem being I don't have the windows recovery disc. I bought my computer from a local Computer tec and he loads windows on it for you. I have no time to run my compute over to him as sunday is my only day free.

I think that I just wrecked my computer in the process of this attempted fix windows refuses to boot now WITH or WITHOUT the HDD. Please help this is getting out of hand

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