[Techtalk] Removing Grub from MBR

[Mike]

Bruce
Thanks for that clarification. I probably should have clarified even more
than I did on my answer.
Mike

> Peter,
>
> An assumption is being made that the partition table is always in the
> place the MS master boot record expects it to be.
>
> Windows ME came out at the end of a period where boot sector viruses,
> disk manager software, and boot access and / or switching utilities were
> common. The viruses and boot access utilities would often move the
> partition table. The disk manager software would change the drive
> geometry reported by the BIOS. Booting with the BIOS supplied geometry
> would result in looking in the wrong place for the partition.
>
> So, while true that fdisk /mbr does not touch the partition, it can
> still render the system just as unusable because the partition is not
> where it is expected to be.
>
> Bruce
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Samuelson [mailto:peter at p12n.org]
> Sent: Sunday, January 23, 2005 1:49 PM
> To: Mike
> Cc: techtalk at linuxchix.org
> Subject: Re: [Techtalk] Removing Grub from MBR
>
>
> [Mike]
>> fdisk /mbr will take care of it but you will probably have to
>> reinstall ME again, as it will be a fresh mbr and wont know where to
>> boot.
>
> Not true.  fdisk /mbr doesn't touch the partition table, just the
> *rest* of the MBR.  The partition table includes an "active" flag on one
> partition, and the MS-DOS MBR uses this flag to decide which
> partition to boot.  I suppose it's conceivable, but doubtful, that
> Windows ME would forget to set its own active flag.
>
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