Uninstalling GRUB

[Jon Winn]

Hello.  I'm very, very new to Linux.  Currently I have FC 3 installed on a 
2nd hard drive on my computer, with Windows XP on my primary.  When I 
installed FC 3, I opted to install the GRUB boot loader.  Well, now I want 
to remove FC 3 and the boot loader from my system, but simply removing the 
2nd hard drive doesn't work.  I haven't been able to find anywhere how to do 
that.  I'm trying to uninstall everything so I can set up a Linux box server 
as a stand alone.  Any help would be gratefully appreciated.  Thanks!  JKW

[John Cox]

On Sat, 05 Mar 2005 10:09:23 -0700, Jon Winn  wrote:
> Hello.  I'm very, very new to Linux.  Currently I have FC 3 installed on a
> 2nd hard drive on my computer, with Windows XP on my primary.  When I
> installed FC 3, I opted to install the GRUB boot loader.  Well, now I want
> to remove FC 3 and the boot loader from my system, but simply removing the
> 2nd hard drive doesn't work.  I haven't been able to find anywhere how to do
> that.  I'm trying to uninstall everything so I can set up a Linux box server
> as a stand alone.  Any help would be gratefully appreciated.  Thanks!  JKW

You should be able to FIXMBR from the windows recovery console to wipe
out GRUB and boot from windows. I'm not sure of exact syntax. Maybe
someone else will provide that here.
Good luck.
John

[Jonathan Berry]

On Sat, 05 Mar 2005 10:09:23 -0700, Jon Winn  wrote:
> Hello.  I'm very, very new to Linux.  Currently I have FC 3 installed on a
> 2nd hard drive on my computer, with Windows XP on my primary.  When I
> installed FC 3, I opted to install the GRUB boot loader.  Well, now I want
> to remove FC 3 and the boot loader from my system, but simply removing the
> 2nd hard drive doesn't work.  I haven't been able to find anywhere how to do
> that.  I'm trying to uninstall everything so I can set up a Linux box server
> as a stand alone.  Any help would be gratefully appreciated.  Thanks!  JKW

You didn't look hard enough (or maybe too hard) : )
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub-legacy-faq.en.html#q12
Actually, the instructions there aren't that great.  I think you can
boot from a Win98 boot floopy, if you have one, and run the "fdisk
/mbr" command mentioned on the above site.  I think that should work
fine for WinXP.  You can also boot your WinXP disk with the recovery
console and run "fixmbr" as John Cox suggested.  There may be issues
with this if you have upgraded to SP2 and still have an SP1 install
disk.  If this is the case, I suggest going the fdisk /mbr route. 
There are also other boot loaders around that you might be able to
install in Windows if you have trouble with the above suggestions.
I think Mohamed Ameur misunderstood what you wanted to do.  You want
to have one WinXP machine (this one) and one dedicated Linux machine
(another box), is that right?  If so, you should be able to just move
your Linux harddisk over to the new Linux-only box without
re-installing (or at least it's theoretically possible, I've heard of
cases where that has worked).

Jonathan

[yufan]

'fixmbr' command under the windows recovery console works pretty fine
for this problem