easy way to restore mbr in winXP after removing linux partition?

June 11, 2006 5:49 PM

I was using GRUB to dual boot a linux partition and a winXP partition. I set this up ages ago and recently needed to remove the linux partition. I used Partition magic because I was feeling lazy. Now when I boot I get some grub error. I can boot using a morphix liveCD and selecting "boot from first partition" or whatever it actually says. WinXP doesn't have fdisk so I can't fdisk /MBR, and I'm not familiar enough with diskpart to want to mess around. Although I feel like an idiot for asking this question, what simple and probably obvious command will restore the MBR to it's pre-grub state? Thanks.
posted by Grod to computers & internet (8 comments total)

maybe this can help:

http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=313

how to repair windows xp in 8 commands.
posted by fumbducker at 5:56 PM on June 11, 2006

Stick in the xp cd and boot into the recovery console. You can run something like fixboot or fixmbr from there.
posted by crypticgeek at 6:25 PM on June 11, 2006

assume I don't have the xp cd anymore.
posted by Grod at 6:39 PM on June 11, 2006

Time to dust off the floppies.

You can download XP setup disks from Microsoft. I haven't done this myself, but I think you can get to a recovery console with these disks alone.

Or, get a floppy image from Bootdisk.com and run fdisk /mbr from that.
posted by zsazsa at 6:55 PM on June 11, 2006

maybe this?
posted by jepler at 6:57 PM on June 11, 2006

do you have a floppy drive and a 6.22 dos boot disk? ... i know that would work with fat32 ... not sure about ntfs, though

one of the links on this page might help

don't feel bad ... i've done this myself and didn't have a floppy drive ... i went to my other computer, burned a boot cd from the 6.22 dos floppy boot and then booted up the screwed up computer to do fdisk /mbr ... but i've kept my xp system on fat32
posted by pyramid termite at 7:00 PM on June 11, 2006

In my experience, the Windows XP setup CD will not even boot if GRUB is installed in the Master Boot Record. The easiest way to fix that is using an MS-DOS boot disk from bootdisk.com as zsazsa mentioned and run fdisk /mbr from there. After that, use the recovery console from a setup disk and run the FIXMBR command.
posted by LightStruk at 7:03 PM on June 11, 2006

this might work
posted by pyramid termite at 7:03 PM on June 11, 2006