Removing Vista from my MBR -- Help!
 

So I have been dual booting XP/Fedora6 on my Dell Inspiron 630m
with no issues and I use Grub as my bootloader.

So I get a copy of Vista RC1 and i think.. lets try it. BIG MISTAKE! So now I reformatted the vista partition.. and re-installed Grub. I can boot into linux by selecting it from the Grub menu but I cannot re-install XP. I am thinking something in the boot record is preventing it.

Any one know of a way to wipe out the MBR from within Linux as I can't seem to get the bloody thing to boot of the XP cd.


Thanks All.

Nothing that you describe would stop the Windows CD from booting. Did you mean that it won't boot, or it won't install?

If the latter, Windows in notorious for seeing something on the drive that it doesn't like and declaring the drive to be no good. I don't know if just wiping the mbr will do it.

First--from Linux, put grub on a floppy--this will allow you to get back to Linux after wiping the MBR. If you need the exact commands, post the output of fdisk -l (run as root)

Backup important data first

to wipe the mbr (assumes one IDE drive)
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=446 count=1

(To be precise, this wipes the boot code, but leaves the partition table)

for SATA or SCSI, change hda to sda

Ok Will do. And sorry for the mixup. I meant it wont boot the XP CD. It starts by saying examing your computer's hardware and then goes to a black screen and stays there.

I will try your suggestion and let you know in a lil while.

Thanks.

If it won't boot from CD, I'd fix that first.
Is the bios set correctly?
Will it boot from ANY CD?