Hi, I wanted to format the complete harddisk. I deleted everything but the grub boot manager in the MBR is still there. I couldn't delete it. I overwrote MBR already with windows recovery cd but it didn't help. Is there a possibility to overwrite the MBR? 2008/7/24, John Andersen :

On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 6:15 AM, Franz Preihs wrote:

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Hi, I installed the boot manager grub with Suse 10.0 some years ago and after installing Suse 11.0 with the live cd recently the system could not be started without the cd. I partitioned the hard disk again, even did it with windows xp , and also I installed Windows XP again - nothing helped. I installed Suse 11.0 with the live cd and in Yast I wanted to delete the boot manager which is no option there. I tried to find anything in the partition setup as well. I can´t get the grub manager deleted. I have tried several things which I found on the internet like using fdisk with the dos boot floopy, fdisk mbr, with the recovery disk.. I used several cd´s with different programms to delete the hard disk but nothing helped. Bios doesn´t give the option to delete the boot manager.

How can I delete grub?

Does your machine have anything in the bios about hard drive protection, boot sector locking, etc?

When you grab a dos boot disk (or windows bootable CD) and run bootdisk /mbr what exactly are the error messages?

Are you sure there is only one disk in this machine and you are not whacking the wrong disk?

I will try tomorrow if it helps. thanks Francis -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Hello, On Thu, 24 Jul 2008, Rajko M. wrote:

On Thursday 24 July 2008 05:04:31 pm Franz Preihs wrote:

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Hi, I wanted to format the complete harddisk. I deleted everything but the grub boot manager in the MBR is still there. I couldn't delete it. I overwrote MBR already with windows recovery cd but it didn't help. Is there a possibility to overwrite the MBR?

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 should fill with zeroes first 512 bytes of hard disk. Note it is /dev/sda whole hard disk, not some partition.

Watch it! That also deletes all primary partitions, including an extended partition and thus also all logical partitions. To only delete the bootcode, use: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1 count=446 That leaves the partitiontable intact. Or use 'fixmbr' from a WinNT/XP/Vista Recovery Console. Or just use 'install-mbr' (e.g. from a KNOPPIX CD/DVD), which installs a XP compatible MBR. I don't have the exact syntax in memory, but it's IIRC something like 'install-mbr -p 1 -e 1 /dev/sda' to install a MBR that automatically (and only) boots a WinNT/XP/Vista on /dev/sda1. -dnh -- Max, do you realize, that you just hooked up with your ex-girlfriend, who's the ex-girlfriend of your other ex-girlfriend? -- "Tommy" [from www.striptease.com] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Thursday 2008-07-24 at 18:04 -0500, Rajko M. wrote:

On Thursday 24 July 2008 05:04:31 pm Franz Preihs wrote:

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Hi, I wanted to format the complete harddisk. I deleted everything but the grub boot manager in the MBR is still there. I couldn't delete it. I overwrote MBR already with windows recovery cd but it didn't help. Is there a possibility to overwrite the MBR?

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 should fill with zeroes first 512 bytes of hard disk. Note it is /dev/sda whole hard disk, not some partition. If you see any errors post them.

Notice that this also deletes the partition table... You have to use an offset, but I can't find the note I made of this. However, I think the OP is not booting the right disk. The bios may be booting from a different disk than he thinks, or he is trying to erase grub on a disk that is not the one that boots. Here: http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Howto_repair_boot_manager_Grub_on_opensuse_10.3 there are instructions and links. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4-svn0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFIiR4UtTMYHG2NR9URAiPeAJ422sVPH6CMdZPM5Hv1JqqaiBTzMwCfdT1J 0t/xMr7ufenXriwV6v7KfZc= =fmMd -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org