Mysterious deleted linux partition

BopNiblets

This isn't so much a problem now as when I discovered it, but it's so weird.

All started when I booted up my PC and Grub appeared with an Error 22 message, fiddledy dee!
Ok, so I booted Linux Mint LiveCD and Googled a bit and confirmed that I should use my Vista disk to fix the MBR, so I did, then booted the LiveCD again to restore GRUB only to get another error message about the file not being found (after this: find /boot/grub/stage1), so I go back out and boot up Acronis Disk Director and discover my linux partition is unallocated space... WHAT? WTF?? :eek:

Now Acronis Disk Director has an Un-delete function that seemed to be a huge deus ex machina in this case, so I was able to restore GRUB and Linux Mint worked perfectly again!

So, what do you guys thing happened?
Wizards? Gremlins?

cance

what exactly did you to do get vista to fix your mbr? did you do a repair? fixmbr in recovery console?

thats odd, i'd imagine that vista recreated the partition table as it wasnt able to see your linux partition...

Garth

Vista's sp1 overwrote my MBR and also deleted my linux partition. I no longer have Vista now :-)

BopNiblets

cance wrote: »

what exactly did you to do get vista to fix your mbr? did you do a repair? fixmbr in recovery console?

thats odd, i'd imagine that vista recreated the partition table as it wasnt able to see your linux partition...

I used the Vista DVD Command Prompt and did "bootrec.exe /fixmbr"

I didn't know there was a partition table, so Vista nuked the whole partition? Rage!

Tobias Greeshman

In the early days I've heard some right horror stories about dualbooting vista and linux, but I thought these were mostly gone by now.

A grub "error 22" is normally that the grub files (binaries, configuration, etc) which would reside in the /boot/grub location are corrupt or not found. Have you done a file-system check on the harddisk? Could be something simple like that so grub couldn't load.

I find it very hard to believe that "bootrec.exe /fixmbr" would touch the partition table. Looking at Microsoft's docs on the command it doesn't mention anything other than it rewrites the mbr data only, and leaves the partition table untouched.