Removing grub from MBR

alek66 · 04-20-2007, 09:57 AM

I have grub on MBR on my laptop, y want to pass my laptop to my mother, she uses win. I dont know how to erase MBR. My laptop only has cd, no disket, I use to boot with a system disk and format it. How can I do it now?

Nishtya · 04-20-2007, 10:14 AM

Depends on the version of windows. In 98, you can boot to a command prompt whatever you have been doing to format and issue fdisk /mbr or if XP you boot on your XP CD and choose "R" for recovery console, then the command fixmbr.

But wait, what are you going to do with the space now being taken up by your (presumably) linux install? I suppose you don't have to reclaim it, if you think you will want the laptop back you can just let Linux stay there and you can access the linux paritition with a Live CD and reinstall grub.

Lenard · 04-20-2007, 10:19 AM

One can use any of the Live Linux CD to remove GRUB from the MBR, like the SystemRescueCD;

http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

Example: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda count=1 bs=512

Any modern version of Windows (XP/2003/Vista) can use the fixmbr and fixboot utilities;

Example:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d....mspx?mfr=true

.

alek66 · 04-20-2007, 10:19 AM

No, linux (ubuntu) must go... it will be a win xp only laptop.

alek66 · 04-20-2007, 10:24 AM

Thanks I`ll go with the recovery console thing!

Nishtya · 04-20-2007, 10:32 AM

Well, linux will still be there. You just will lose grub and the option to boot the linux install and windows won't (without special drivers) see the linux format parition. To reclaim the space so that windows can see it, reformat that partition to ntfs. Be careful of what partition you are formatting if you decide to.