i can't start linux so i can't go to /etc/grub.conf, unless you know another way to go there
The first thing you need to do is get your hands on any kind of live CD. If you don't have any lying around, go burn an ISO of
partedmagic. Insert it in your CD drive and voila (parted magic is a little slow to boot, but it lays in your RAM so its use is super fast).
You will then need to mount the partitions on your hard drive (chances are /dev/sdbX or something like that). This is when we'll be able to discover how far the damage goes. Try to access your old files and paste the output of grub.conf (chances are it's just a grub corruption).
Here are the commands to do this (assuming your old / partition is now on the /dev/sdb1 partition formatted in ext4):
mkdir ~/olddrive
sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sdb1 ~/olddrive
cat ~/olddrive/etc/grub.conf # For the record I'm not sure this is the file used by Mint, better make sure for yourself (man grub-update)
Once you establish that your old partition is okay, we can proceed to reinstall grub.
3 remarks:
- There's very little chance that installing the SDK will corrupt grub. Try to remember what else you could have done, or else what were the exact steps you followed to install the SDK (especially the steps involving sudo).
- This is one of the moments that you start wishing you had a separate /home partition. If that's the case, then good for you but know that my above procedure would be a bit different.
- If you don't know on which device will be your old partitions, ask here.