i shot myself in the foot with grub-just like the directions said I would
 

"Help! I removed something (in this case, Puppy Linux) and now grub won't boot..."
I know that if someone gave you a dime evreytime someone posted this you'd be a millionaire, but I did it any way, and grub (which I never have figured out. I installed it, never got it to work, and since I don't have a windows disc to run over it with, just ignored it and ran Puppy from the live cd) now gives me an error code. All is well until I try to boot.
That's like saying my day goes pretty well until I wake up.
I have come up with a solution, but it's not one that I like. Buy Windows 007, redo the MBR, wipe the slate clean and start over. Then throw that disc away too.
Can't do any worse, I figure.

What is currently on the system windows xp or a linux version. If you have windows xp you can download some recovery disks from the internet to solve that issue. If you have linux its even better you just need to reinstall grub or lilo depending on what your using.

so, your saying you what?
formatted the partition puppy was on

removed puppy installed inside windows
or what??

Installed grub to mbr, per the directions when I installed Puppy to the hd. I vaguely remeber something saying "but if you remove Puppy, grub won't see the files, and you won't be able to load windows."
And, well, it works just like they said it would...or wouldn't. I did look for something on the net to rewrite the mbr enough to get to whendoze, just so I could overwrite the mbr and sart from scratch. Not much luck.
I did however discover that Ubuntu, which I installed on another computer a few weeks ago, can't seem to burn an iso!

So, there is no longer a menu.lst in /boot/grub folder?

Try adding k3b to your ubuntu install, burn a linux iso at slowest speed, dao

this can be fixed
but gotta know if you still have a menu.lst

if no menu.lst
we gotta make one

Or you could install any ubuntu/debian to that partition where puppy was
and they will auto recognize windows

The reason gub will not boot is because it can no longer find its files. Grub needs to be able to find its stage files. What you can do is create a small partition at the beginning of your drive set it to bootable and then copy the grub files over to that drive. Or you can boot with a live cd that has grub on it and instead of boot up when it gets to the menu choose to edit it by pressing e then put rootnoverify and then start a new line and put chainloader +1 then select your new line you created in the menu and press b to boot it. This should allow you to get into windows. Once you are there you can fix the mbr by opening up a prompt and typing fixboot /mbr if memory does not fail me. If nothing else ill see what I can find online cause I am sure there is a windows xp recovery somewhere. BTW it is not vs the EULA in windows to make copies of the disc only to redistribute the key so if you can find a iso of a real xp disk you can use it to fix this issue.

download from the net to fix MBR
 

Any recomendations? Google didn't come through as well as it generally does. Then again, how many people have to redo their bios every hour on the hour?

further info
 

As far as menu.lst, or anything far that matter, I removed the files and resized (and rearranged) the partitions to install Vector Linux, which installed lilo. As far as I can tell, the only "grub" anything I have is in the MBR.
If I can get grub out of the way, lilo may work.

why didn't you install lilo to mbr during vector install?

Well if you have linux installed then I would just say to boot with a live distro that includes lilo and reinstall it via the command line. That or if it lets you boot a system on the drive do that then reinstall lilo into the mbr.

So I still have no idea what's going on.

If you only have Windows, what's stopping you from using your Windows install disk to fix the mbr for a Windows only system? As far as I know, the Windows installation media should have something like a recovery console where you can run some "fixmbr" tool or something like that. This will allow you to boot only Windows, as long as it's installed and intact.

If you have installed another Linux later, then I can't imagine why the installer installed an OS but not a proper boot loader to load it...

So, *right now* what's in your PC? and whatever the answer is, are you planning to stay with what you have or are you planning to install something else? We need to know the scenario to walk across it.

I still dont have a clue wats going on....

Are you trying to say that you had windozz and Puppy dual boot. Then you removed puppy, i assume u just formatted puppy's root partition... if thats the case, u erased /boot, thereby removing grub's files....

Now if i understand u right... all u have to do is pop in the ubuntu CD which u have... and reinstall grub from there. Then you ll have to modify the menu.lst file, to boot windozz from grub.. (u might find installing ubuntu, easier)

I got it! All I had to do was burn down the house!
 

Read online that any windows disc would overwrite the boot. Had an old windows 98 disc, so I went for it. It overwrote grub, no problem.
It also pretty well guaranteed that whatever hopes I had of seeing XP again were as good as Sadam Hussein's re-election chances. So much for not sweating the small stuff. Anyway, it works now ( and it only took one beer!)
For what little it's worth, I did try kd3 on Ubuntu. I got nadda out of it, but the door on the dvd burner sticks, and I open it with a paperclip. Kd3 said I was ghetto.
I had XP, but with grub blocking the door, had no way to get into it.It was mostly taking up space, but it came in handy when I had to tell someone at an Indian call center that my internet didn't work, and not say something besides Msoft when the asked what system I have. Say linux and see how well things go.