FixMBR Question

[flawedreality5]

I want to uninstall Ubuntu and get rid of the GRUB loader on the MBR. I saw in a recent post to use the FixMBR command under the recovery console. I have 4 partitions on my computer. C: for Windows and programs, D: for games, E: for my music and school work, and the other for Linux. Losing C and D is fine but E: is unacceptable and I don't have the means to back it up. I have about 25gb of information on there. Backing up that partition is not impossible but I'd have to move the 25gb over my wireless 54mbps wireless network, thus taking a very long time. Will the FixMBR command screw up my partition scheme and make me lose everything? I'm unsure of how it works.

Thanks
-Brandon

[GaryRouth]

If you have a USB 2.0 port on that box, for a small investment, you could get an external USB 2.0 hard drive enclosure & then buy an inexpensive drive -- and backup your data (you really need to do this anyway, after all). You should be able to do this for about $80 (USD).

I haven't yet had to use the FixMBR repair from the Recovery Console - and I have noticed that in some of my reading that partition tables can get scrambled & all data is lost. Perhaps the easiest way to avoid worrying about that would be to run a repair reinstallation of XP (which generally is less apt to disrupt partitions).

Ryan just left a quick guide here in this forum http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=151872

And I left one down in the Tips & Tricks forum
http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=151522

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[flawedreality5]

I didn't think a repair install would fix my MBR and partition tables because GRUB is installed on there, would it?

[GaryRouth]

Hi again

I believe that a repair reinstall inspects the boot files and configuration, but I haven't yet found a good article with all the details. If I can find one, I'll post it here.

I looked a bit more into threads with similiar situations like yours. And, strangely enough, quite a few systems removed Grub successfully with the old Win9x command fdisk/mbr

This surprised me a bit, but quite a few users said it worked for them just fine. Before they used it, they used the Windows XP Disk tools to delete the Linux partitions, recreated new partitions in that unused space (formatting them with either NTFS or FAT32), and then booted the computer with a Win9x boot floppy, and used the fdisk/mbr command.

Others have had success using the fixmbr command from the XP Recovery Console, but there are some situations where it has to be used with caution http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d...ns_fixmbr.mspx
---> Some have had trouble using the command when booting from their XP CD = this is because if no hard drive is specified, the fixmbr command defaults to the system drive (and when the system has booted from the CD, fixmbr defaults to the CD drive unless the user types in the device_name parameter) . . .This is the long way of saying "be sure to specify the hard drive correctly"! The command grammar is shown in that details link above.

If you decide to use the Win9x fdisk/mbr method, you can use a bootdisk from http://www.bootdisk.com (I think a WinMe fdisk would work best with today's large drives - it's more recent than the older Win95/98, and can handle drives larger than 64gb).

I've got a few errands to take care of, but if I can, I'll try to find the mbr details for a repair reinstall later on.

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[flawedreality5]

Wow, thanks a lot for the information. Very helpful. Although, I might just just do a fresh Windows install and use Partition Magic to rearrage the free space and partitions when I'm done. I was leary when I went into the recovery console and it was like "there might a chance that your partitions will be inaccessable after this". I have over 4000 songs on my E: drive and would probably throw myself off my roof if I lost them all. But for future reference, I'll keep the fdisk in mind.

Thanks
-Brandon