dual boot with 2 drives

[chris]

On Wed, 2010-09-22 at 14:53 +0100, 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 memeory it is 
FIXBOOT

followed by

FIXMBR


-- 
Just my 2c's worth
Cheers the kiwi