This is freaky.

A few weeks back I did an overhaul of my computer, repartitioning the hard drive, etc. I installed Windows2000 on an NTFS-formated hda1. I used the Win2k install disk to format a 5gb FAT32 partition for hda2. I set up everything in Windows, then got MEPIS Linux to install on hda3. (no /boot or /swap...this was a rc version that still had some bugs, but I wanted to try out the new distro and see if I liked it.). The install put GRUB on the MBR and automaticly configured it to dual boot.

I was never able to boot into Windows after that. After fidling around with my GRUB configuration for a while without sucess, and trying to get the windows install disk to "fixmbr" without sucess, I tried booting to Windows with a floppy disk and files copied from the win2k box downstairs. I got a message that "ntoskernel.exe", the windows kernel, could not be found.

After some failed attempts to restore the file (1.5 MB is just a liiiiitle too big to simply copy from a flopy disk) I gave up for a while. I came back to it yesterday and tried to reinstall windows. I've done this dozens of times in the past. It should have been a textbook install. The Windows CD formated the NTFS partition and copied all the files it needs off the CD, a process which also involves copying the NTLDR bootloader onto the MBR and normaly overwrites any other bootloader I have installed there. It doesn't indicate any problems.

I reboot in order to continue the next part of the instalation.

And GRUB comes up. And it still wont boot into Windows.

Since when does a Windows install *not* overwrite GRUB?

More importantly, how do I get GRUB out of the MBR?

If you can get ahold of an old win98 boot floppy you can boot into dos and run fdisk /mbr. That should do the trick.

That's basicly one of the things I already tried to do, except using the Windows2000 cd and the "repair console".

My XP installed the ntloader into the partition it was on when I had my linux + xp on the same disk, didn't touch the MBR. Perhaps it overwrites the MBR only if it's NOT installed on the first partition (i.e. hda1 no hda2, or 3, etc..).?

I had that once, it didn't overwrite the mbr and everything worked fine. I sat there stunned for a while and then just accepted it as "being very lucky"

But yeah, I'd definitely try to reinstall it if it still isn't working. Go to www.putergeek.com to get a new bootdisk if you need it.

That's a good question - how *do* you uninstall GRUB? There is no mention of removal that I can find in the documentation at gnu.org. I'm not entirely familiar with it, I have to say, but did it create a backup before writing the MBR in a similar manner to LILO that you can use? Considering you had another OS installed I would have thought there would be.

Could this also be a problem related to drive geometry settings being mis-represented as in the Fedora/W2k-XP issue?

Best regards,

If you mean simply remove it, the only way I know is the old "fdisk /mb" after booting from a Win98 disk or DOS disk 1. There are equivalent commands via Linux. If you mean remove it and install LILO, it the same way as above, boot up using a Linux rescue cd and set LILO as your boot manager. Then uninstall GRUB as per your distros methods.

I wasn't particularly clear but, yes, I did mean remove GRUB's boot loader from the MBR. LILO has an option (-u or -U) to remove itself from the MBR and thus restore a former boot sector. I was surprised in not being able to find a similar facility with GRUB.

It's amazing how useful a Win98 boot disk/CD is, even these days!