Heyall.

I recently had Ubuntu installed on a 120gb hard drive with a 720mb swap partition. I wanted to set up the computer as a dual Ubuntu/WinXP with the majority of disk space going to WinXP.

I booted in with a Win98 boot-disk and ran fdisk to remove the primary and extended partitions that were associated with Ubuntu.

I then restarted the computer (via ctrl-alt-del) and booted into CD-Support mode with a WinXP install disk.

I then created a new partition entirely for WinXP that took up as much of the hard drive as possible. I was going to partition the disk for Linux later. It made the partition and formatted. I then restarted the computer.

Then I made E: my current drive and then CD\i386 to run WINNT

I didn't have SMARTDSK to run and make things faster so I had to sit through 2 hours of copying data to memory and then to my hard drive. It finally completed the copy stage and told me to remove the Win98 boot-disk (floppy) from the drive so it could boot into the CD-Rom.

At this point, it booted into Grub. Loading Grub 1.5. Grub Error 17.

You can imagine this really sucked because it had taken so long to set up the files for the WinXP install.

Please, how might I go about fixing the MBR so it no longer points to a partition that no longer exists? Or how if there are any better fixes (aside from not putting WinXP on at all) might I get my PC running with WinXP again. Thank you.

fdisk has a command to put in the Windows mbr, but the easiest way is to boot from the Windows install disk, select repair, console mode. When you get a prompt, type "fixmbr" and you're done.

Hmmmm: Linux forum helping with Windows install issues--is that legal???

Two methods

(A) Any Dos bootable floppy with fdisk.exe inside. Boot up and type
or

(B) Any Win2k or XP installation CD. Boot it up. When the installer stops and gives out the 3 choices choose the recovery console and type
Reboot and the Grub will disappear. Your installation should be still there.

The boot sector is not part of the filing system and must be overwritten by another boot loader.

Boot Sector Write!!!
Virus: Continue Y/N [Y]

that's what I get when I run fdisk /mbr
At this point, what can I do other than just say "Hrm, maybe this is normal" and continue with a 'yes'. Thanks for the help. I'll reply if my problems are fixed.

That question will appear every time you use fixmbr. If you don't want to see it use the Dos floppy.

M$'s MBR is interchangeable between DOS and XP. Many think XP's MBR must be restored by its installation CD. I run 3 Dos and 3 Windows in the box and always do the opposite.

I use the floppy to restore XP or Win2k MBR but a installation CD to restore Dos's MBR. Never met any objection yet.

You haven't tried hard enough saikee ...
Go find a Win95 system, and build a floppy there - use it to build the MBR, and try and load an XP system located above cylinder 1024.
What about a Dos 3.3 disk - I'd be willing to bet it couldn't deal with a LBA disk at all.

Just my mind meandering in the New Year - haven't tried either of the above ...