Hi,

I dual boot with SuSE 8.1 on hdb and Windows Xp Pro (paid a fortune for XP pro and then decided it was time to start to learn linux) on hda, how do i remove the loader from my windows hard drive, as when i went to reformat my linux drive (im just playing around with different distro's at the time being) i cant get back into windows (i am trying to learn - honest guv!), just get a message about the Grub, any ideas how i can reformat my hdb and still get into windows as normal???

thanks
xilent

u can use
fdisk /mbr
which will clear ur master boot record.
fdisk should be on ur SuSE cd or else on a win98 cd if you got one.

btw. windows does not use a bootloader on the mbr so if you clear it, it will boot straight into windows

Not sure if XP has fdisk--I know Win2K doesn't and that XP is merely Win2k in drag (both are really NT 5). I have also not heard of Linux fdisk being able to clear this problem up. So if onix's solutions (which are the easiest) don't work, you will need to use the Windows Recovery Console to issue this command:

fixmbr

You can get to the recovery console by booting from the CD. In Win2K, this was a little tedious--I had to go through several menus (always selecting the option indicating repair) to finally be presented with Rescue Console as a menu option. fixmbr required me to confirm twice that I wanted to overwrite the mbr. While tedious, it did work.