usb drive installation breaks the hard drive installation

[rickjohnston]

Hello,

I have a desktop that used to dual boot Debian Linux and Windows XP. I attemted to install Ubuntu 8.04 onto a usb drive and now the system will not operate without the usb drive attached, and windows no longer works and the Ubuntu linux does not work. Is there any way I can repair windows without losing the Debian installation, and is there any way I can restore the Debian installation so that it will work without the usb drive? I don't want to reinstall the Debian because I have a copy of Maple whose activations are all used.

Thanks,
Rick

[wolfen69]

HERE (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=224351&highlight=reinstall+grub) is a how-to reinstall grub. in the future, you will want to pull the power cables on your internal drives while installing to a usb drive.