Grub rescue, unknown file system. Can't boot into Windows 7

Posted by Sam J on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Sam J
Published on 2011-04-03T03:33:52Z Indexed on 2012/04/07 11:35 UTC
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Filed under:

Windows

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ubuntu

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partitioning

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grub

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bootloader

So, I'm confused, so I'm also going to use this question to get clarification and fix my computer.

So, some background: I had Windows 7 on a 1 TB HDD and decided to partition my hard drive into two ~500 GB, one for Windows 7 and one for Ubuntu or whatever flavour I desired (like a sandbox partition...)

I installed Ubuntu but the installation had issues so I decided to uninstall. Note before uninstallation I had to press f12 when I turned on to boot from my primary HDD, then choose what OS I wanted to use. Undesirable, but it worked.

Anyway, after I decided to uninstall Ubuntu I went into Windows 7 > Start > Computer > Manage and deleted the EXT4 filesystem (Ubuntu parition) giving me 4xx GB of free space. However when I restarted Windows 7, I am now unable to boot Windows.

When I DON'T hit f12, I see a blank screen with a flashing underscore. When I DO hit f12, I choose my primary HDD, and then I get a GRUB error:

Unknown filesystem:

grub rescue> _

Something I'm unclear of: GRUB boots linux partitions, right? What boots Windows? Is GRUB "overwriting" the Windows bootloader? How can I completely get Windows back to normal? (IE, It boots automatically without hitting f12.)

Thanks for any help, I'm on a live CD version of Ubuntu right now until I can get back on Windows.

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