Grub rescue
 

I installed Ubuntu 9.10 several weeks ago and was never able to connect to the internet or actually get it to work properly. In an attempt to do so, I apparently deleted the partition where I installed Ubuntu over Windows Vista XP. Now when I start the computer I can't get past the screen that says (Grub loading..no such partition..grub rescue) I'm thinking I should uninstall Ubuntu and start over. But since I cannot get past this screen, I'm stuck and not sure what to do. All help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Do you have an installation or live CD? You should be able to tell your computer to boot from the cd and reinstall. does that not work?

Ubuntu/Linux is an operating system. And operating systems is not made to be uninstalled like ordinary programs.
You have a few choices here:
1/ Fix Master boot record, using window recovery console in DOS mode (hardest)
2/ Re-install window and get the same result with options 1 (easier)
3/ Re-install ubuntu (easiest)

I downloaded another copy of the installation disk, but how do I get the system to boot from the CD? It won't budge from the GRUB loading page. Thanks for your help.

You need to set the BIOS to boot from CD
At boot, press F2 or F12 or ESC or...depending of your computer, and set it to boot from CD

How did you originally install Ubuntu?----e.g. did you not boot from CD then?

Zenwalk normally uses lilo bootloader I think.
I tried it once (can`t find the version) . Lilo showed the three partitions as I can remember and worked fine. To change the loader menu script and get it saved to disk is not easy nowerdays. Sudo pcmanfm or thunar or konqueror and sudo leafpad or gedit or kate could be needed nowerdays for changing permissions and so on. But as I can remember it was zenwalk and absolute that compaq bios-award/protect did not allow to access the bios so both bypassed.....

To burn .iso requires special programs.

Stop the countdown at grub that most times is 10 sec and less and hit `e` for having a look at the lines. Try changing the partition number, changing sd to hd or otherwise, change or insert root (hdnr,number of partition).