Removing linux

Macross · Post by **Macross** » 22 Jan 2009, 02:57

At the moment i have linux opensuse installed and i dont realy like this distro so i want to remove it. But as i know after removing linux partition you will not be able to boot WinXp becouse linux bootloader has overwriten MBR. So im a bit nervous about fixing MBR from win repair console. Ive read some articile that says: "fixing MBR may damage partition and it might not boot anymore" Is that true? If so whats the proper way of removing linux?

Post by **bad_brain** » 22 Jan 2009, 04:34

is it the GRUB bootloader? if yes there is no need to "fix" the MBR when you want to get rid of Linux.
start Linux and open the file /boot/grub/menu.lst, pretty at the bottom you will find the entries or the OSs, simply remove the entry for Linux, looks like:

Code: Select all

title Opensuse
   kernel (hd0,1)/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda7 vga=791
   initrd (hd0,1)/initrd

when done reboot and you will only have XP on the boot menu left, then you can format the old Linux partition or install a new distro if you want to.

but if you really only want to have XP as only OS and no new Linux install is planned then you can use the fixmbr function to get rid of GRUB too, usually it is not dangerous, but it's always a good practice to backup important files first....just for the (very unlikely) case something goes wrong (like a power blackout during the fixmbr procedure).
if there are no known hardware problems with your HDD fixmbr is safe to run...

Macross · Post by **Macross** » 22 Jan 2009, 06:33

Thanks bad_brain. Im planning to install another distro i think i will give a try to FreeBSD desktop

Post by **bad_brain** » 22 Jan 2009, 07:26

you mean DesktopBSD? http://www.desktopbsd.net/
I've installed it too, it's pretty nice! I've only had a little trouble with the xserver after updating the system because the included (nvidia) driver didn't matched the xserver version anymore afterwards. if you want to update ALL packages (including the xserver) and you use a nvidia gcard you will need the newest driver first, here's a howto: http://desktopbsd.net/wiki/doku.php?id= ... dia_driver