Rescue mode and grub rescue beyond my understanding
 

Hi

I am a novice user and have done something rather stupid.

I have an old Dell Inspiron notebook on which I managed to take off Windows and load Mint 18 which went well. Wanting to update to 19 it occurred to me that it would be better to download 19 onto a disc, take off Linux entirely, them simply reboot from the disc. Which I did, in that order.

Wrong! When I turn the notebook on, it doesn't boot from the disc and I get this:
error: file '/boot/grub//i386-pc/normal.mod' not found.
Entering rescue mode...
grub rescue>

I am now SERIOUSLY out of my depth and none of the many suggestions on line have worked, and I've tried lots!

I hope someone can help me resurrect the notebook and I make a heartfelt plea that any advice should be given assuming you are talking to a poorly trained monkey.

Thanks

how did you put Linux on the disk. The disk isn't booting, the bios is skipping the mint19 disk and trying to boot from the hard drive.
how did you take off Linux? that is probably why your getting the grub rescue message.

Using my Windows PC, I googled "Download Linux Mint 19" and was taken to a site with lots of places from where I could download. I picked one in the UK, which is where I am and it appeared in my Download folder. I copied it to a disc from there and put it in the disc drive connected to the notebook. When the notebook powered up, I hit F12 and changed the boot to CD drive, but it obviously doesn't boot from there. The downloading procedure was how I got Linux in the first place and that worked fine for 18, To remove Linux, I followed a You Tube video which told how to remove Linux. I suppose I should have either simply updated 18 to 19, or perhaps even just put 19 over the top, if that's possible. But I didn't and now I'm in trouble :-(

That's the question asked, how did you put it on the disc? Copying it to a disk won't work, you need to have burning software that will give you the option to "burn as an image" to make it bootable.

You might post a link to the Youtube tutorial so people here would know specifically what you did. There is no point in 'removing' the operating system as all you need to do is format the partition(s) on which it exists during the install. It's an operating system not an application.

If you have a empty spare usb rufus is a good program for putting a live iso on a usb.

The OP managed to get Mint 18 installed, so the basic procedure must be ok. As yancek suggests, the iso was probably copied not burnt. In Windows try right-clicking on the iso file and select "Burn as image" or somesuch. Then try the install again.

Solved!
 

Thank you so much for your help and advice all of you.

I now have Linux Mint 19.1 installed and I'm a superuser!!

Hah! I wish!

best regards

Please mark your thread SOLVED.

Wouldn't mind knowing how it was solved...

I took the advice that I couldn't just copy the download to a disc, I had to burn it onto the disc. Once I had done that and booted from the disc, everything fell into place.

Very relieved and grateful for the advice!