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I accidentally deleted my Ubuntu 14.04LTS partition lately (with Arconis Disk Director under Windows 7), now I cannot boot either into Ubuntu or Windows. After I start my computer, I will be brought to the Grub rescue mode. Typing "ls (hdX.msdosY)" for any X and Y gives me the response "Filesystem is unknown". I tried reinstalling Ubuntu with a USB stick, but as soon as I hit "Try Ubuntu without installing" or "Install Ubuntu" in the Ubuntu installer boot menu, the computer restarts. What can I do? Is it possible for me to recover my Ubuntu installation, or at least boot into my Windows installation? I've read similar posts on this website but I still don't know how to deal with my specific situation. Someone please help!

More info on my Ubuntu installation: My laptop was preinstalled with Windows 7, and then I installed Ubuntu alongside Windows. I have only one hard drive and I created a 100 GB logical partition for Ubuntu.

More info on how I deleted my Ubuntu partition: I was showing a friend how to expand the Windows C: drive with Arconis disk director. My Ubuntu partition uses ext4 file system so it's shown as blank in Arconis. Without much thinking (since I have a few other unused partitions so seeing a blank partition didn't alarm me), I showed him how to delete that partition and use the released disk space to expand C:. Later when I was going to get back to work with Ubuntu, I found myself unable to boot! Neither Ubuntu nor Windows!

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I presume your primary aim might be to recover the existing partitions. There are tools that will help you do that. I think that, before whitewashing your whole disk, it may be worth your while to try them out.

These tools are gpart (not to be confused with gparted) and TestDisk. For instance, the wiki page of TestDisk states:

TestDisk is powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software: certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy.

You should try these two tools first. Even if you fail, not all hope is lost: you may try recovering the deleted partition table (which will at least allow you to conserve your Windows installation) by manual operation. You can find detailed instructions on how to do this in this Linux Documentation Project wiki page.

Should all of this fail, you will have to wipe your entire disk clean before re-installing. You may do this as follows: start Ubuntu from the USB/DVD choosing Try Ubuntu without installing, open a Terminal, install gparted,

  sudo apt-get install gparted

start it as sudo, choose the HDD (careful, do not choose the medium on which the Ubuntu live distro is booting from!), reformat it (probably best to format it to FAT32, so that Windows will know its way around the disk). Now you can install Ubntu on the wiped-out disk. But remember, this is only your last resort after the previous methods have failed.

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  • Hi Marius. Thanks for your answer. I've been procrastinating a lot from fixing my laptop lately, using computers in the library. I have a question and please forgive me if it's silly since I'm a newbie: How can I use the two tools you mentioned since I can't boot into Ubuntu or Windows? I have tried using a Ubuntu installer on a USB stick but my laptop restarts every time I hit "try ubuntu without installing" or "install ubuntu". Nov 17, 2014 at 20:48
  • Say something plz Nov 18, 2014 at 13:43
  • @GoldenArmor The tools mentioned above cannot be run from an OS on the disk: they must be run from an OS located on a different medium, either a USB stick or a DVD. If the laptop restarts when you hit Try Ubuntu without installing, you may have a 32bit version when a 64bit is needed or viceversa, you may try EFI installing on a n msdos disk or on a GPT disk without UEFI partition; read this thread for further info, ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2187335 Nov 18, 2014 at 15:36
  • Thanks again Marius. I think I did make the USB installer with amd64 Ubuntu for my 64 bit laptop. I'll check and try your other suggestions as well. Nov 18, 2014 at 17:42
  • I just found out that the reason why I couldn't use the USB installer is because I didn't format it as fat32 (the flash drive was in ntfs format) =s Nov 19, 2014 at 5:49

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