How to change, alter, or completely remove Grub Boot Loader from Windows XP?

[nicemancb 0]

I've got 3 drives: all 20gb capacity

1st HD - WinXP (no partitions)

2nd HD - NTFS formatted; just for backup

3rd HD - Suse Linux 9.1 Personal

 

I installed the I installed Suse Linuz 9.1 mainly with default settings. I chose GRUB as the boot loader and also specified that I don't want install linux on my Windows drive. I then later found out that the GRUB MBR was installed in BOTH drives BUT the essential files for GRUB are only on my linux drive! So if I remove my Linux HDD, GRUB will throw disk errors at me and not boot windows (I think it kinda defeats the purpose of me installing Linux on a seperate drive) I played around with the boot settings in the control center in Suse 9.1 and I found an option where you can setup the Grub Loader on a floppy disk but I didn't finalize any of the settings and left them at default just to be safe that I don't screw anything up.

 

Other thing I don't understand:

When I boot my PC from the windows drive I get the nice GRUB splash screen and can choose linux or windows

When I boot my PC from the linux drive, I get the GRUB shell

Why is that?

 

Also, what can I do to "fix" my problem? There are two things I'd like to do:

1. Bring back the OLD configuration: Windows drive doesn't have GRUB just the default loader; Linux has GRUB;

-When I boot my PC w/o linux drive, windows loads instantly

-When I boot my PC w/ linux drive, GRUB loads and lets me choose linux/windows

2. Install full GRUB on both drives;

-When I boot my PC w/o linux drive, GRUB launches and lets me boot (only?) windows

-When I boot my pc w/ linux drive, GRUB launches and lets me boot linux or windows

 

[danleff 0]

Could you boot into Suse and get into /boot/grub and open the menu.lst file and post the output of Grub? We need to see what Grub is using as the boot drive.

 

First, you need to decide on one thing to do. You can either use the Grub bootloader all the time, or the Windows bootloader all of the time. You need to decide which you want.

 

I assume that you are changing the boot order in the bios to boot one or the other drive? I hope that you are not disconnecting drives and trying to boot that way?

 

 

[nicemancb 0]

Hey Guys! I figured this one out through a co-worker of mine at work. What I did was I changed the boot sequence/files in the controller center of SUSE 9.1 and set it up to load GRUB from a floppy disk. After doing that I rebooted my system with WinXP OS cd to recovery console and did fdiskmbr command. I was a little hesitant in proceeding because the warning stated that It may make the partition unreadable. I proceeded anyway and it successfully wrote the mbr back to its original state. I restarted and my system booted straight to WinXP without the GRUB loader coming up. I reboot the system with the GRUB boot floppy I made and I had the choice of selecting to boot with Linux or Windows. Thank you Dan for offering your assitance on this issue. Take care and I wish you all a great new year!

[fitzy 0]

ok i have kinda the same problem but i had simply mepis on my computer i only have one hard drive, i also had grub, but yesterday i decded to format the linux partitions of the hard drive, it was working fine afterwards untill i turned my computer off, because when i turned it back on again it was telling me it cant find grub, now my problem is that i cannot just place the linux system back in to do all that, can somebody help me get rid of grub or atleast tell me how to get my computer to boot straight into windows, knowing that i can only use the bios and my cd drive (i tried seeing what my windows instalation cd could do).

[fitzy 0]

i have an easy way to do this if anyone else has the same problem.

 

i went onto the linux help site just type it into google and i found somebody else with the same problem.

 

somebody there said to try using a windows98 boot disk and then using the command fdisk/mbr so i tryed it, and the computer made a little whirring noise then i restarted and it loaded straight into windows, yeya!

[danleff 0]

Yes, this works on some systems and not on others. This is a second, less desirable method. but if it works, fine!

[fitzy 0]

less desirable method? x)