MBR

[Fajar Priyanto]

On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Norman Silverstone
<norman at littletank.org> wrote:
> I have an oldish HDD which had Ubuntu installed and I decided to install
> XP Pro onto it and use it for some tests I wanted to do. However, I have
> been hit by a difficulty, I cannot install XP Pro. The installation goes
> OK up to the point when it needs to boot from the HDD and there it stops
> giving some most unlikely error about cables. I think I read about
> something similar some years ago and the MBR was blamed for this. Is
> this likely and, if so, how can I prove it is the case and then put
> things right, please?

Do you mean that you suspect Ubuntu's bootloader is still on the MBR?
To get rid of it:
1. Boot with Ubuntu liveCD
2. Open terminal: sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/(your harddrive)
(adjust to your need: /dev/sda, /dev/hda) bs=1k count=10000
That will surely destroy the MBR.

And continue the XP installation.