I had Linux 12.10 on my hard drive and after much frustration trying to get certain Windows programs to work with it, I reinstalled Windows on a new hard drive (in case I wanted to go back to Linux).
After awhile, I got an external-drive-converter-thingy and booted Linux from it. It worked fine. Then when I tried again without changing any settings 2 hours later, I got the grub rescue error. I have no idea why it should be any different since no settings have changed.
I want to format the drive to use as an external drive, but Windows doesn't recognize the file system either, and won't let me access it. (It's weird. Windows registers it as being plugged in - it lets me safely remove it - but it doesn't register it as being a drive in My computer. I have Windows XP if that helps.)
How can I access the contents of the drive/format it?