Dual Boot Windows 2000 & Mandrake Boot Manager Problem

[GfW]

I HAD dual boot system with Windows 2000 and Mandrake Linux 9. When Mandrake was loaded months ago it created its own boot manager to allow the option of selecting the OS to boot.
I wanted to clean my hard drives and do a fresh install of Windows 2000 and once up and running would then add Linux.
I formatted C: drive (Windows) and X: and Y: drives (Linux and Linux swap). Loaded Windows and some software (Acrobat, Photoshop, Office, ZoneAlarm, Partition Magic). Every reboot, the Mandrake boot manager would appear even though Mandrake was no longer on the system. I then decided to take the space previously used by Mandrake and re-allocate it to the Windows partitions so, using Partition Magic, I resized and moved partitions.
Next reboot the system will not load. On the post, the system gets to the PCI device listing and then I get 9.5 screen wide rows of the nuimber 99 and everything stops. Normally after the PCI device listing shows on screen, the Mandrake boot manager would open. As I said above, it was still appearing but after resizing and moving partitions it seems like the post is looking for the boot manager, can't find it and goes ... DUH, WHAT DO I DO NEXT? and it stops.

My question ... how do I fix this? What is directing the system boot to look for the Mandrake manager? How can I access this and remove all reference to the boot manager so that the system boots directly to WIndows 2000? Wherever it is, how do I access it as I can't boot to anything?

Thanks.

[jglen490]

That's genuinely weird, because Windows formatting usually does not respect foreign boot code. That leads me to believe that the active partition as far as the BIOS is concerned is not the C: drive.

So:

What did you use to format the C:, the X;, and the Y: drives?

What other drive letters do you use and where are they located physically?

What does the BIOS see as the first boot partition?

[Force Flow]

Welcome to PCMech, GfW!

With XP, you boot from the cd and use the repair console > fixboot > fixmbr

I'm *assuming* it will work with 2k. I'm not entirely sure, though.

[Markoman01027]

You should always fix the master boot record when you remove Linux that came with it's own boot manager. Because even if you remove Linux, the boot manager will still be there. What Force_Flow suggested to do, should do the trick.

[GfW]

I used Partition MAgic to format the drives. The problem was the MBR and when that was repaired everything was OK again.

Thanks for the help.