dual boot with 2 drives

[Liam Proven]

On 20 September 2010 20:25, Norman Silverstone <norman at littletank.org> wrote:
> < snip >
>>
>> Thanks again, I think that method [2] is the way to go. I will keep you
>> informed of progress sometime next week.
>>
> After overcoming one or two challenges put my way I now have what I
> wanted, a dual boot system on two HDDs one with Ubuntu and the other
> with XP Pro. I have learned that to install XP Pro onto a HDD that had
> had Ubuntu installed it may be necessary to remove the MBR first. Thanks
> to all who helped.

Glad to hear it and happy for whatever help my messages have given you!

In the interests of accuracy, you can't remove an MBR from a PC disk.
All disks have an MBR and if they don't you can't use one.

The thing is, Windows puts nothing much in the MBR, whereas Linux uses
it and needs to put stuff in it in order to bypass the normal Windows
boot process and get in there so you have a chance to use it.

When you install GRUB (v1 or v2 or even its old LILO predecessor),
part of it goes in the MBR. That's normal & what you'd want,
generally.

But it can throw Windows. The easiest way of removing the Linux magic
from an MBR and putting a vanilla Microsoft one back in place is to
boot off a DOS floppy and type

FDISK /MBR

... if of course your machine /has/ a floppy. If not, you can do this
from a Windows XP recovery console, but I can't remember the command
offhand. It's something like

FIXBOOT

followed by

FIXLDR


-- 
Liam Proven • Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 • Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AIM/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven • MSN: lproven at hotmail.com • ICQ: 73187508