How To Replace Master Boot Record On Dual Boot System & Delete Linux Drive
Mar 8, 2006
I have a dual boot system (2 hard drives) booting Suse and XP and boot up through Suse's built in boot manager which gives me the option of booting to Windows or Linux. But since I barely ever use Linux I want to delete it off the 2nd drive so I can use it for a storage drive, so I'm wondering how to replace the Windows Master Boot Record so I can just boot into my XP drive. I'm scared that once I delete/reformat the contents of the 2nd hard drive (I'll probably use Partition Magic to do this through my XP drive) that I won't be able to boot XP up anymore. So before I do anything I want to just be able to boot into XP and bypass the linux drive before I delete it to make sure everything is ok.
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Jan 30, 2008
First I'll describe what I intended to do, followed by me explaining my problems, and ended with my actual question.Intentions:Fixing my Master boot record file with a FIXMBR and removing my Ubuntu installation due to lack of usage, amongst things.
Merging the old Linux partitions space with one of my current NTFS partitions for the extra space (all above-mentioned partitions are on the same HDD, for the record). Would've done this with Partition Magic.
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Dec 14, 2006
I have a hard drive from an old computer (Win 2000 Pro) that I wanted to piggy back on my new computer.Only thing is it wont recognize it since it shows it as a Master Boot Record drive.I even tried putting it in an external hard drive enclosure with a USB. System saw it and loaded it properly, but it is not available in Windows Explorer.Its just plain "not there"!
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Jan 12, 2009
I'm trying to dual boot 2 different installs of xp pro from 2 drives using the Windows boot loader. I've edited the boot.ini every possible way I can think of, but nothing works. I've done this plenty of times using a linux boot loader or dual booting from a single drive but I cant figure this out. I haven't been able to find any reference to this subject anywhere, but I think it would work. Anybody have a clue as to how to do this? I know I can use a different boot manager to accomplish this, I just wanted to make the Win boot.ini work. Or, does anybody know of a good boot manager if I cant make this work?
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Sep 1, 2005
When I use the diskeeper 8.0 to defrage the drive, it found out that on my
master boot record there are 3 fragments. how to unified these 3 fragments
into 1?
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Feb 23, 2006
I have a Gateway GT5032, Athlon X2 4200+ w/ 1GB RAM, 80GB (system) & 250GB HDs running WinXP MCE 2005. I was using the PC to open Nero VisionExpress while I was opening an edited DVR-MS (~1GB) movie when the movie became very choppy till it froze (Nero took a while to load as well). After waiting several minutes I end tasked the movie and continued to have a slow response time from the PC. It returned to normal speed, then I would try opening the movie (using Windows Media Player) and the movie was still choppy till it stalled. I eventually restarted the PC...I noticed that it took a LONG time to boot WinXP and would ''stall'' every 5 seconds for about 2 seconds. During bootup it reported that an error was in C:Windowssystem32Rasapi32.dll, but it did boot into Windows and all.
I rebooted in hopes of fixing the problem, but then the PC had trouble recognizing drives. After being shut off for about 10 minutes, the BIOS recognizes all drives again but reports an MBR error on boot up and will not even load Windows. I'm assuming that MBR is the Master Boot Record...and that scares me a lot. I am wandering if there is any easy way to repair this problem. And also if the MBR is indeed damaged, could it also have harmed my other files on the HD (such as Rasapi32.dll)? What is the function of Rasapi32.dll. I don't suspect a virus as I was not running any suspicious files lately.
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Jan 2, 2006
I was messing around with Ubuntu Linux and it installed GRUB on the master boot record and I want it gone. I was told to type 'fdisk /mbr' in MSDOS mode to get rid of GRUB. I dont know how do get into MSDOS mode.. command prompt doesnt work.
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Apr 6, 2010
I booted up my computer and got an error message saying "STOP: C0000218 {Registry File Failure} The registry cannot load the hive (file):System RootSystem32ConfigDEFAULT or its log or alternate. It is corrupt, absent, or not writable" I tried rebooting in safe mode, to no avail. Now I can't even get it to come back to the other "STOP" error screen because every time I boot up my computer a window pops up labeled "Dell PC Restore by Symantec" and states The Dell system recovery tool has detected an unsupported change in your master boot record. The tool cannot run at this time."
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Feb 1, 2008
I am running Windows XP and would really like to share the hard drive with another OS "Linux" and dual boot.
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Jun 12, 2006
I was running a dual boot of windows XP and Ubuntu Linux prior to installing Vista beta 2. Now, after upgrading windows XP to vista beta 2 i no longer have the boot screen that allows me to chose between my linux boot and my vista. Any way i can get back into linux? I did not make a boot disc for linux.
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Sep 8, 2008
i was having sum problems with ubuntu when i installed it onto my second hard drive(d).on my (c)drive i have xp pro installed and on the (d) drive i had nothing until i installed linux ubuntu so i decided to remove it and i messed up because before i uninstalled it i formatted that hard drive(d),and thought that should be ok coz it must have removed it,and i'm sure it did,but now every time i turn on my pc it gives me a choice of choosing a operating system either XP or UBUNTU,how do i get rid of the ubuntu on the startup i just want it to go into xp and not give me a choice,i have looked into it and every body says i should use the fixmbr in command in recover with the xp cd running and i did that but it still doesn't remove it
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Feb 22, 2007
I have Windows XP home edition already installed on my system and I for some reasons I want to reinstall them on a different hard drive (I have 2 IDE drives). It is very important that my initial windows setup, the one I am running on now, will be working after the new installation too. Is that possible?
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Oct 24, 2009
I accidentally deleted a partition and later found out that my system is dead....The only way I recover out of that is I reinstall Windows and then install grub again to recover the Linux partition. But I feel the delete partition is a very rapid process just taking seconds and in that I don't think files would be deleted, so I feel potentially I can recover the deleted partitions including the boot partition. But I don't know how to do it. Also now when the boot partition is deleted and the system is not booting up what should be done to recover the system and data?
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Apr 3, 2007
I have successfully cloned my primary c partition of a dual boot system with XP Pro on the 1st primary partition c: and XP Pro on the 2nd primary partition as d: I can boot into my XP on the c: drive with no problem, but when I attempt to boot into my XP on the D drive it hangs on the blue screen right before booting into the user profiles. And believe it or not it continuously loops making the windows startup sound and the shutdown sound. It does the same in safe mode. I will try to explain the process on what I did so it can help you experts figure out this dilemma that I'm having. My old drive an IDE 100GB IBM primary drive was partitioned into 3 parts:
c: 30GB FAT32 primary
d: 30GB FAT32 "
e: 30gb FAT32 "
All ran great in XP's on c: ,D: and :e except that i was running out of room in all the partitions and the drive is getting very old , I think (5yrs). I used XXClone Pro v.0.58.0 to clone my old c: and d: partitions to a WD IDE 160GB. I tried many other cloning proggys like Acronis True Image, Drive Clone, Paragon Drive Copy, Drive Image 2002, HDClone 3.1 Pro but they all either changed my new drive NTFS file system to FAT32 or made exact same size copies. I formatted and partitioned my new drive as follows:..............
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Aug 11, 2005
I've got an HP / Compaq notebook where the smart diags indicated a failing hard drive, HP shipped me a replacement drive under warranty and I removed the drive and used a couple of notebook hard drive adapters to hook them up as master and slave on the secondary channel of one of my desktops. I then used Ghost to clone the failing drive to the replacement since I really didn't want to have to reinstall all my applications again. The clone completed without any seeming problems however I haven't been able to get the new drive to boot up, the problem is that I just get a blank screen with a flashing cursor and no boot menu, end of story...
I happen to have a Win XP Pro full version CD and I am able to boot from the CD to the recovery console, I've tried the following: Chkdsk /R - Did find and fix some problem the first time around, but didn't find anything wrong on subsequent runs. Fixboot - ran with no problems but still no go. FixMbr - indicated "This computer appears to have a non-standard or invalid master boot record", no matter how many times I've run this and it says it's rewritten the MBR successfully it still says the same thing. In-place upgrade - I've run an in-place upgrade twice and both times it completes and says the system will reboot and the installation will continue but it still gets stuck on the reboot. Following the two in-place upgrades I've rerun all of the previous steps and I still can't get it to boot, nor do I get any type of error message that indicates what the problem is.
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Nov 5, 2006
I have a dual boot environment with two Win XP installed on different disks, XP1 and XP2 . XP1 was installed first and contains the boot files (NTLDR, boot.ini...) and XP2 came second. Now, I would like to keep XP2 and get rid of XP1. How can i delete XP1 since it contains the boot files? if i delete XP1 i am afraid to not be able to boot on XP2.
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Oct 15, 2005
My Desktop screen seems to be booting twice. I want to check and see if that is true and if any other system programs are booting twice during initial bootup. How do I access the Master Boot List, or System Startup Menu, whatever you may call the list the OS uses to Start the system up when it boots.
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Jun 17, 2006
I installed Windows Xp twice on my computer on 2 several partitions the other day, the reason were for some testing.When I went to the BIOS and deleted the Partition which I did not need, my pc restarted but somehow it went to the Dual Boot again? Now it just annoys me that It can't boot by itself because I have to choose the system that is working, how do I delete the other one, so XP just starts with the one that is working by default?
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Sep 29, 2009
I'm running Windows XP and want to migrate to another hard drive. I used the excellent open source utility CloneZilla to clone my hard drive to the new drive, and used the equally excellent EASEUS Partition Master to resize the cloned partition to fill the new drive. Next I edited boot.ini on my original Windows to add the cloned drive as another boot option. After a bit of trial and error guessing the disk path for boot.ini I was able to dual boot into the original or the clone.
Now I want to boot off the new drive directly without dual booting off the original drive as I intend to wipe the old drive after I am satisfied that everything is working OK. But here's the catch: the original drive is SATA, while the new drive is IDE. So I can't simply swap the cables around and be done with it. So I configured the boot sequence in the bios to use "HDD-0" instead of "SCSI" (for some reason this old BIOS thinks SATA is SCSI) and restart. The system gets as far as detecting the boot source (floppy first, then CD-ROM) and then stops. No "operating system not found" or any other kind of error, just a blinking cursor and no activity.
I get exactly the same behavior using "HDD-1" to "HDD-3" as the boot drive in the bios. The bios detects the drive itself OK. I have also edited boot.ini on the new drive to point to the same location I used to add it to the dual boot menu on the original drive, but that didn't help. I also booted off the Windows installer, went into Recovery mode and ran Fixmbr and Fixboot with the original SATA drive unplugged and without specifying a device name.
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Nov 20, 2006
Ok i made an Xp bootable CD. I did this 2 times and I followed all the instructions, burned it in nero as CDROM (boot) with all the correct settings. I downloaded the XP boot record (bin file) and I used that as the boot image.However, when I use this on the computer I am tryikng to install it on, it says "searching for Master boot record on CD.." for about 15 seconds on startup and then just boots from the existing hard drive OS because aparently it can't find the boot record.The cds work fine on my laptop, if i put it in and run it after my laptop is already started up, the windows xp menu for installationcomes up fine.never had this happen before so i don't know what the problem is.. i changed the boot priority so it is trying to bootfrom the cd rom, but just cant.
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Nov 16, 2006
I have a Hewlet packard computer here, the mother board is a n1996, th eoperating system is ME. The computer justwill not boot at all., it gets to the ME Logo and th escreene just goes black. I can satrt it in safe mode, but i cannot restore it to an earlier date, no mater which date i choose, i just get the mnessage can not restore. I want to, reformat and install XP home, but the CD ROM does not show in my computer and it does not see the disk when i put it in. Also i tried to boot from a Woindows 98boot disk, and themn i get the message non system disk, replace and press any leter to continue.
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Sep 7, 2006
I have a dual boot Win98, WinXP system. I reformated the win98 drive and started over. When I did this the computer only booted in to 98. So then I reloaded WinXP. Now it only boots into XP. Also, when I got into Control Panel>System>Advanced>Startup and Recovery, only one system is listed. It used to give me the choice. How do I fix this? Here is my old boot.ini file. I tried to find a new boot.ini file so I could rewrite it, but I couldn't.
[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=C:
[operating systems]
C:="Microsoft Windows"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
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Jul 7, 2005
If someone has one physical drive with Windows 98 on C:windows and Windows XP on D:windows, what should their boot.ini file have in it so that they can chose which one to boot with?
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Nov 26, 2009
I have a dual boot system with both having windows xp.When I load into the 1st XP installation, the following is the list and assignment of the drives:
C : Local Disk (contains the 1st XP installation)
D : CD Drive
E : Local Disk (contains data and also few installed program folders)
F : Local Disk (contains the 2nd XP installation)
Initially when I noticed this drive arrangement after setting up the dual boot, I just left it as is, not knowing what to do.But nowadays I am having a lot of problems as the installed programs are not accessible because their target location keeps changing, everytime I keep switching between the two operating systems.How can I solve this problem?Can I do the follwing : Load into the 1st XP installation, and then change the drive letters (of the last three drives) such that they are matching the drive assignment as seen when loading into the 2nd XP installation.Here in a way I have kept the same drive name for both installations.But Will this work?I also have some of the program folders for the 1st xp installation stored in E drive, and after changing it to D drive, will all the links be properly converted upon restart?
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May 24, 2007
The Windows XP Pro SP2 CD (it's legit, I bought it from Microsoft) will not boot from when I start it up. I've already went into my BIOS settings and changed the Boot Order so it will try to boot from the CD-ROM first. What happens is that I get the "Press any key to boot from CD....." message. After I press a key, I get the "Setup will now inspect your computer hardware and configuration..." message and then the screen goes blank and stays blank. The blue Windows Setup screen never comes up. I've tried the same CD on another PC (it had XP Pro SP2 on it, not Linux) and it boots up fine so it must be my computer. Also, I tried booting a Windows 95 CD and I got a "BOOT DISK FAILURE" message. I do know that my computer can boot from a CD because my Linux CDs (Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mint) boot with no problems at all.
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Feb 5, 2007
I will be formatting my drive now and I want to install XP and Vista so that I can choose which one to load at the start of booting up. How would I do this? Do I need to create two partitions, install both operating systems on the separate drives and then done? Or is there more to it? Which operating system should I install first, if there is any difference
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Jun 8, 2005
I have two hard drives, both of them with Win 2000 Pro. The First has been the master in machine one from the start. The second HDD has been in machine twoand that machine has crashed so bad that it is not worth the time, energy or money to fix it. This second HDD has important data on it that is only accessable through older programs that are only on this drive. (It is a church membership data base program and a church financial record program) I have the added problem that no one in the office has a clue where the install disk are for these programs and they are not where they are suppose to be (this was before my time). I would like to place the second HDD in the first machine and set up a dual boot so the user can choose which drive to operate from. There is the added problem that the computers only have a restore disk that came from Dell and not a full Win 2000 Pro CD.
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Jan 12, 2008
I have a computer in which I have an XP dual boot on 2 separate hard drives (160 & 120 GB).I have had this particular combination in working order since 4/07. A few days ago my 2nd drive (F) would not boot. I get only a blank, black screen and nothing else NO error messages or warnings. My C drive will boot normally, no problems.The drive is "seen" in BIOS, startup and in my computer on the C drive. The drive is there but the darned thing just will not boot. I have tried using "fixboot" & "fixmbr" to no avail!
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Sep 19, 2007
I have an old HD From a system that I got rid of. I want to put it into a friends system to see if I can retrieve the files off of it and put it onto my external HD. The hard drive was the boot disk and the computer I am installing it on has it's own boot disk. If I boot up with two boot disks will there be a problem? Is there anything I need to take into account before doing this? I am planning on installing the old HD onto an ATA cable that I unplugged from the DVD drive. The HD that is in this system is not on an ATA cable, I'm not sure what it is connected to, just a small plug with a blue cable going to the mother board.
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Jul 26, 2005
Can anybody point me to the instructions about how to install XP Pro to a single Win98 hard drive - to make it dual boot, like Win 2k? I've been looking all around the internet and the only thing I've found is an XP dual boot on a 2nd hard drive.
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Jan 22, 2006
I bought a computer for my wife and kids. Well months go by and my wife tries to install something and notices that the MAIN drive is H: not C:
I figured that it was weird but no big deal. Well I purchased a printer for her and while trying to install the software it was giving me a "Windows - No Disk in Drive" error.
I did some research and spoke to HP tech support and they suggested that I search the web for a way to change the drive letters from H: (current hard drive) to C: (supposed to be default drive)
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