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I recently set up a dual-boot on my laptop with windows 7 and linux mint. Then I deleted the partition which linux mint was on, that turned out to be a very bad decision. When I try to boot I get:

error: no such partition.

grub rescue>

Then I made a bootable usb stick with unetbootin to try to install linux mint, but when I try to boot from it I get:

Boot error

I have tried to run commands shown in other answers here on superuser but I always get:

Unknown command "my-command"

I already backed up my files and want to install linux mint as my only OS, any help would be appreciated!

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By deleting the Mint partition, you have basically deleted grub. Thus, when the machine code inside the MBR tries to locate the second-stage bootloader (GRUB) it will come up empty handed because the partition on which GRUB was located is no longer.

The failure of Unetbootin is, at least AFAIK, unrelated. A few checks: did you turn SecureBoot off, in the BIOS? Have you activated booting from the USB stick, again in the BIOS?

Alternatively, it is known that Unetbootin fails, occasionally. For instance, this Arch Linux Wiki page states:

UNetbootin can be used on any Linux distribution or Windows to copy your iso to a USB device. However, Unetbootin overwrites syslinux.cfg, so it creates a USB device that does not boot properly. For this reason, Unetbootin is not recommended -- please use dd or one of the other methods discussed in this topic.

So, if you are using another Linux system to format your USB stick, I suggest you use the following command:

  dd bs=4M if=/path/to/mint_image.iso of=/dev/sdX && sync

Careful: sdX is your USB stick. You must determine the drive letter appropriate to it, generally you cando this with

 fdisk -l

The dd command will wipe the contents of sdX, so please make sure you are writing to the right device. Also, notice that it is sdX, not sdX1 or whatever: it is the physical name, not the partition, that must be used. Lastly, the USB must be unmounted. If your OS automatically mounts it, then unmount it (without removing it, of course) by means of

 sudo umount /dev/sdX1

where this time you must use the number after sdX.

If instead you are using a different OS to format the USB stick, the above-referenced Web page has instructions on how to do it without using Unetbootin, both in Windows and in Mac OS.

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