is it possible to install just GRUB in a PC with no linux?
 

Hi.
My mother has a notebook with windows and it's not booting anymore. Some problem in MBR.
I have already tried all options, like /fixmbr, fixboot, rebuildbcd.

I'd like to solve it installing GRUB, since it always recovers all my OS that are not booting anymore. The problem is that her laptop doesn't have linux installed.

Is it possible to install just GRUB without linux? How?

Have you tried

http://www.supergrubdisk.org/

yet?

not trivially as grub chains on to the stage2 image which is in the /boot partition of one of the Linux systems on the machine. You can run grub-install from an installer, however that will only get you a very minimal stage1 (1.5?) shell which I don't think give you any of the good stuff you are after.

You can always create a minimal partition to store /boot. You should also be able to store it in the windows partition itself, but I never tried it personally.

For the rest, all you need to install grub is a livecd, I know there are grub versions for other oses, but know nothing about them either.

iirc, its called grub4dos

You can create a separate /boot partition as indicated above or a separate Grub partition or you can create a bootable CD as explained here (Grub Legacy):

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...D_002dROM.html

or Grub2:

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...D_002dROM.html

Simplest solution is SuperGrubDisk as suggested above. You will obviously need a Linux CD or installation to get the Grub files if you try one of the two methods above. Since windows isn't booting, its boot files or something else may be corrupted and there is still no guarantee any of this will work.

Thanks for all the fast and excellent replies.
For any of the suggestions, I'll need some help.

1) About creating a minimal partition, how can I resize the existing partitions to open a space for the new linux partition? The laptop has 3 partitions: first the windows system partition (~100 MB), second the windows partition, and a data partition in the end. I'm thinking about resizing the last partition, but I just know how to do it graphically.
2) How does the super grub disk works? I burn it in a CD, boot it, and then it installs itself in my MBR? Is that it?

If windows can't fix it, I'd doubt you should try grub.

Be sure you use a live cd to save off all her data before you begin.

I'd also suggest you might get a bartsPE disk too as part of your toolbox.

There are different methods and files on different windows versions. You don't indicate which windows version you have. I'd do a little more investigating before trying to resize. It sounds like you have an OEM installation with a boot partition, system partition and recovery partition but there is no way for us to know that?? The last partition is probably the recovery partition. Do you have a recovery disk? Which windows version do you have?

The supergrubdisk boots the system from CD, it doesn't install to the mbr, AFAIK.

My gut reaction is, Format the MBR.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/69013

For that you need a DOS boot disk.

Otherwise, you could take a look at it with Trinity Rescue Kit.

another possibility is use USB for booting.
but if I were you, I'd replace the hard drive with ssd. and if its IDE replace it with CF.