I had a windows vista / mandriva 2007 dual boot system but want to get rid of mandriva to claim back disk space. I have already deleted the mandriva partitions but would like to know how to get rid of the lilo bootloader. I have tried booting from the vista DVD and clicked on the repair windows startup option but it does not detect a problem. I was wondering if I could boot from an XP CD and use the recovery console to do fixmbr / fixboot but was worried that I wouldn't be able to boot the system at all. Would appriciate any help in this matter

Vista's setup disc should work, if it's of any use. There are sites on the net that provide you with download links to boot disks, or you could just as well do it with your Vista if it's working. After that it's safer to try and run XP's fixmbr, I think it should work but since I don't (and won't) own a Vista copy I couldn't know for sure. There was a change or update in the tool somewhere around XP's older days, but I think the newer version should work with Vista. Of course you can have a Linux live-cd just in case and if it goes wrong, reinstall GRUB or LiLo to be able to boot somehow.

I know Windows' tools suck when you have to do real work. Can't you "force" Vista re-write MBR? Kinda stupid

Thanks for that. I'll try fixmbr, like you say I can always reload lilo or grub. I've been wanting to play around with ubuntu anyway but i'll still need to know how to do this when I get rid of it.