MBR recovery problems after removing ubuntu, i have been very stupid!
 

okay, i've been very stupid today...

this is what is did:

i wanted to install slackware and remove ubuntu. so what i did: i booted windows by using grub. and i just removed my whole linux partition with ubuntu on it, no problem to me, because i have all my doc's on another partition. next: i wanted to reboot windows to backup all my files on that documents partition: the problem: i cannot get into windows because grub is still there and spitting out some errors (Something with 17 in it i thought) so how can i save windows now? (just to make backups and then never to come back ;) ) i've read about using fdisk with a dos floppy, but the problem is: i dont have a floppy drive in my pc, so there was also said i could use the recovery mode of my win XP cd. theres no fdisk on the whole thing! :( what to do now? if i cannot make that backups i am screwed, theres like 5 gigs of music on it! and all my other stuff. if i can backup everything i just want to erase my whole disk and start all over :)

so how do i fix all this trouble?

Try downloading and booting from the "Ultimate Boot CD" which has a lot of recovery tools. I think there are some DOS boot disks on the CD that you can boot up and fdisk /mbr.

By the way, from XP recovery, the command should be fixmbr.

yes, i did fixmbr but this didn't cange anything. and how can i download that? i am running Damn small linux now in ram! are there no alternatives?

Hmmm... You might be able to make a small /boot partition and install grub to the hard drive to allow you booting into windows.

I think the command is grub-install or something like that... Maybe someone with a little more knowledge of grub could help you out.

well its impossible for me to make any partitions using cfdisk because i get an error: FATAL ERROR: cannot open disk drive

strange...

Try inserting your slackware disk (or ubuntu for that matter) and then only go far enough to create the partition.

Or if you're confident in your chances of installing ubuntu or slack without backing up your data, you can just drop the CD in and go...

Or take the drive out to another machine and copy the files that way...

i think ill take te drive out then, my dad will be mad XD

well. i couldn't backup my data, windows spits out alot of errors whenever i try to copy all my stuff. so in windows, i removed all my partitions, execpt my document partition. so i think i't will be right now. i installed slackware. but when i tried to install LILO i got an error that slackware was unable to install it. they recomended that i should startup by using a floppy bootdisk, but there is no FD in this computer. there are also some remains left of grub, so i cant boot slackware. right now there's no other OS on my PC. i want to install window$ later (just for games). so what to do now?

if you've got the windows cd you can repair the mbr.

You put the drive in another Windows machine? Can you see the directories and files? What happens when you try to copy a file?

It seems that you may be trying too many things all at once. First, with the drive in another computer, find out what is there. Don't attempt to write (install) anything else to this drive.

personally i would let teh windows cd repair the install / mbr :twocents:

see this post:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...33#post2108933