GRUB boot loader blocking windows boot

julienroger · 10-11-2004, 06:47 PM

I have two drives. One 15 gig, with windows 98SE on it, and another 200 gig with Red Hat 7.3 on it. I boot from the windows drive. When I remove the linux drive, and try to boot, I get a black screen with the words GRUB. I know that it's the boot loader. It happens right after the BIOS loads, but before windows even gets a chance to load. Any pointers on how to let it boot windows?
Would another option be for me to totally uninstall linux and all of its components?
Thanks,
Julien

michaelk · 10-11-2004, 07:47 PM

grub is a two stage boot loader. It needs to read the files on your linux drive. Not being able to read those files then all you get is a grub prompt.

If your not going to run linux on this PC anymore you need to remove grub from the MBR. Boot up your 98 emergency floppy and run the command:
fdisk /mbr.

Or an alternative boot plan for when the linux disk is not installed?

aaa · 10-11-2004, 08:23 PM

Running the fdisk should let windows boot, but then linux won't.
You could:
1) Use windows 98 bootloader to dualboot
2) Install Grub to windows partition

There is a howto on #1 at www.tldp.org (DOS+linux-HOWTO or something)

julienroger · 10-12-2004, 01:11 PM

I removed the boot loader using the fdisk /mbr command. It seems to have worked. I think I will re-install linux, this time without a boot loader. I will boot from a floppy.
I was using Red Hat 7.3, but I think I will move to SUSE.
Thanks for your help michaelk and aaa.
-Julien