dual boot with 2 drives

[Traveller]

On 22/09/2010 6:53, Liam Proven wrote:
> 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
>
>

 From my own experience, 'fixmbr' does the job nicely in one step.