Hi.

Problem: I had xp pro on hd1 and mandrake on hd2. Yesterday, I erased hd2 with and reformatted to ntfs. I just want to use xp pro now. The problem is that grub is still in my mbr and it boots the console whenever I startup.


I have tried using xp recovery console and fixboot, but after successfully repairing the mbr and rebooting, grub still shows up.

Has anybody dealt with this before? Any help is much appreciated.

let's not call it "fixing" huh? nothing technically broken about having grub installed... Either way the usual fix was always to run "FDISK /MBR" from a dos boot disk.

Insert your WinXP CD and boot it. When you get prompted to install, choose the "Repair" option. Don't do anything until it asks "Which system you want to log into".

You might not need a password (just hit enter at pwd prompt) and you should get a Cursor.

type 'help' for a lost of commands.

to fix your MBR, type 'fixmbr'

I think there is also a 'fixboot' option - may need to run that also.

That should get your system back to your original state

(Apologies up front, I am doing this all from memory, but that's the basic idea).

First of all grub is there due to you installing it on the mbr. So even though you removed hda2 (Mandrake Partition) you still have Grub. So, I suggest doing the following ->

boot into knoppix (or any other live cd)
type: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null
^^ Will remove the mbr.
then you should install windows default mbr.

~saltron

I'll second the fixmbr solution. Boot your xp cd, go to the console and type fixmbr as stated above. Always worked for me

Close - you need fixmbr, not fixboot.

What you can also do is lay your hands on a dos boot disk. Boot from this floppy and at the command prompt type
fdisk /mbr

This would erase GRUB from the mbr and that's it.

Sorry, it took me forever to get back to this thread. I figured out the fixmbr command was what I needed. Fixboot failed originally, hence this thread. Thanks everyone for all of those bits of advice anyway.