[RAMWolff44]

Hiya,

My first venture back into Linux in quite a while. I went with, what else... Ubuntu. I tried out Kubuntu but it was not quite as slick as I thought it was going to be and quite frankly I thought Dolphin for a system browser was kinda ugly. Gnome has come along long way baby, it's really nice and Firefox is the default browser and Open Office is there too and I suppose if I really want to use the KDE Office apps I can always install it later with it's dependencies. So that's no biggie.

Right now I have a HUGE biggie though. GRUB boot manager is flawed (it's never worked right for me for what ever reason) and it throws errors and then nothing happens afterward so that leaves me to put back in the install disk and boot from that. Takes longer because it's not set up as an alternative boot manager so you have to go through the hoops like your going to install Ubuntu again to get to that area that will allow you to boot from it.

I bought VistaBoot Pro to correct the MBR but that didn't really help me too much, oh well, I have it now and it's like 10 bucks and it seems like good software so I'll keep it.

So I need some expert advice. What I need is a way, through either Vista (my main OS) or through DOS or what ever it's called when booting up the computer to kill and remove GRUB and replace it with something that's not going to corrupt so easily. I don't have that much free time on my hands and my day was pretty much shot and a bit too stressful for my taste with all this going on.

Sorry to be so long winded!

Thanks

Richard

[Grav!ty]

I probably went for a bit of overkill when I had a similar problem some time back RAMWolff44, but zeroing the drive (using a utility from the drive manufacturer - WD in my case) and running /fixboot and then /fixmbr from the command prompt of the Vista DVD or XP CD depending on what else you have installed on the system, did it for me.

See HERE. Like I say zeroing was probably unnecessary. One can also delete the partition and then recreate it and low level format it either from within Windows or preferably by using diskpart from the command prompt of the Vista DVD or XP CD.

I just installed Ubuntu 9.04 last night and although install was great and went smooth with all drivers installed I just don't like it, so I'm going to uhm..."nix" it in the next few days too.

[RAMWolff44]

Hmmm, can't really zero a drive that's got my default OS on it (Vista) so that's out. but the /fixboot and the /fixmbr from the Vista DVD might be smart thing to do I think. Might work and then when I want to get into Ubuntu I can just use the CD to boot in. Seems smart. Wish there would have been a way to abort having a boot manager installed during the installation but how would I have known!!

Do you know the exact procedure to do this though?? Do I put the disk in while I'm booted into Vista or not ..... I think I have the steps printed out somewhere but I've got so many folders and hard copies of things that I don't think I'd be able to find it easily enough. Just thought I'd ask.

Thanks!

Richard ;-)~

[Grav!ty]

Boot to the Vista DVD and at the Install now setup screen, select Repair your Computer then at the menu that pops up select the Command Prompt. Type fixboot and press Enter or Y depending on what is required (it should state) and then type fixmbr and press Enter or Y. You'll get a confirmation or error message. You can also type fixboot /? and you'll get a list of commands and the same for fixmbr /?

I'm more familiar with the XP recovery console command prompt but that should get you going

If you have multiple drives then you will need to specify the drive for example fixboot D: where the drive you want to have the boot sector repaired on is not the system drive. If it is the system drive there's no need to specify the drive.

[augie]

Here's what worked for me and at least one other person. You can then use the *nix space as you like.

EDIT: Oopsie, I should have read the whole post Wolf as my instructions were to get rid of Ubuntu totally, BTW, if I'm not mistaken you need Grub to boot into Ubuntu. Perhaps it's Gnome that you don't want and replace it with KDE?

[gries818]

Here's what worked for me and at least one other person. You can then use the *nix space as you like.

EDIT: Oopsie, I should have read the whole post Wolf as my instructions were to get rid of Ubuntu totally, BTW, if I'm not mistaken you need Grub to boot into Ubuntu. Perhaps it's Gnome that you don't want and replace it with KDE?

Loads of different Boot Managers can be used, but I only know how to use GRUB.

[RAMWolff44]

Thanks for the info. I realize I'm going to need a boot manager to access Ubuntu but I don't know of one that's free, can overwrite GRUB or can work with various OS flavors like Windows and Linux. I had the same error this AM when I booted up (just a few minutes ago) and had to put in the Ubuntu installation CD I burned to get it to boot from the hard drive successfully!! Really quite irritating.

Is there a way to fix this from Ubuntu, does anyone know? If I boot into Ubuntu is there a way to uninstall GRUB and either replace it with a new instance of GRUB (hopefully not broken) or a different OS Boot Manager that will see Windows as well as Ubuntu??

I'll just wait since I guess restoring the Vista MBR isn't really quite what I'm looking for but I am printing out that info you offered so I can do that if all else fails. Keeping that disk in the drive all the time to boot from is a PITA!!

Thanks much!!

Richard

[gries818]

I think that these guides are germane to the topic:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Recov ... ingWindows
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GrubHowto

Be sure to post back if you need any more help

[RAMWolff44]

I think that these guides are germane to the topic:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Recov ... ingWindows
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GrubHowto

Be sure to post back if you need any more help

Unfortuneately this is not working for me:

Bring up a terminal, type:

find /boot/grub/stage1

If you get "Error 15: File not found", try the following: (I did get an error so....)

find /grub/stage1

Not sure how to go about finding which hd it's installed on but regardless it's not anything I can figure out on my own.

Then trying to install Grub.... without the proper knowledge of what hd it's to go on the command below didn't work for me:

Install Grub:

grub> setup (hd0)

[gries818]

Ok, did you try restoring the Windows boat loader? I think that would probably be the best way to go about fixing the problem and then you can reinstall Linux if you want to and hopefully the boot loader should work then.