Need help figuring out a partition problem after bad install

[funkycorpse]

So, I attempted to install Linux Mint to dual boot with my Windows 7 (for games) but I hit a pretty huge wall. I got the "error: no such device found", to which a forum told me to use the Disk Repair Tool. Luckily, I happened to have some old disks lying around so I burned the ISO and ran the repair tool. After completing that and attempting to start up Mint, I was met with "error: no such partition found". Great, right? Everywhere I find says to use the repair tool, like before, so I did that. I ran the repair tool a few different times, tried some different settings and such, and nothing worked. I couldn't boot into Mint or Windows. Finally I decided to just call it a loss and use the repair tool to uninstall Mint, which worked, I'm now back on Windows 7.

I have no clue what happened or what messed up but I have a pretty basic question here: When installing Mint, I partitioned a part of my external HDD to install it to. Now that Mint is gone, a large chunk of my HDD remains partitioned with nothing in it. Is there a way I can remove the partition and have my entire HDD back? It also changed the location of my HDD from J: to G:, which has wonked with a lot of my program shortcuts so if I could fix that, too, that'd be grand.

[novotose]

Bare in mind that I'm a newbie at this, but I had problems as I originally went for a dual boot, but I was on Win10 which is a whole different kettle of fish.

boot-repair will give you a URL to write down and put up for us to look at. I've had problems finding the right boot configuration, but couldn't have done it without those who helped me seeing the boot-repair log. I ponder if you had the same problems I did with Ubuntu 15.10 before I moved to Mint 17.3.

Thanks,

~novotose

[funkycorpse]

Bare in mind that I'm a newbie at this, but I had problems as I originally went for a dual boot, but I was on Win10 which is a whole different kettle of fish.

boot-repair will give you a URL to write down and put up for us to look at. I've had problems finding the right boot configuration, but couldn't have done it without those who helped me seeing the boot-repair log. I ponder if you had the same problems I did with Ubuntu 15.10 before I moved to Mint 17.3.

Thanks,

~novotose

Honestly, I'm not that interested in figuring out what the problem was. The dual boot was mostly for a kind of intrigue at wanting to see what using Mint was like, so I'm just gonna take a step back from it for the moment. I'll come back later when I'm more knowledgeable with it. I'm only concerned with removing the partition on my external HDD right now.

Little Edit: Also, thank you for your reply. I forgot to say that on first post, dangnabbit. My mind is a little frizzled from a stressful day, haha.

[srs5694]

Only the vaguest advice is possible given the information you've provided. Please share either the URL provided by Boot Repair or the RESULTS.txt file that you get when you run Boot Info Script. (Either post it here between code tags or post it to a pastebin site and share the URL to the document there.)

[lostfarmer]

It also changed the location of my HDD from J: to G:, which has wonked with a lot of my program shortcuts so if I could fix that,

if no other partition is assigned drive letter J, boot into Win 7 - Control Panel- Disk Management, select the partition you want to change the drive letter, right click and select change drive letter. ( I do not use Win 7 so the directions may be a little off).

as for the old linux partition-- with in Disk Management you can delete the linux partition and then deiced if you want to make a new Windows partition or maybe you can resize a partition into the non-allotted space after deleting. (Not sure if Win7 , one can resize or not. You can use a live linux)