Re: Removing debian from hdd
On Sat, 07 Jan 2012 11:44:20 -0700, Bob Proulx wrote:
> Camaleón wrote:
>> Guido Martínez wrote:
>> > I recently borrowed a hard drive and installed debian on it,
>> > alongside windows. I used it for a couple of weeks.
>> >
>> > Later, I tried to remove debian by deleting the partitions I had
>> > installed it on, but that caused grub to fail horribly, and I had to
>> > reinstall debian. How can I remove debian? Can I make grub ignore
>> > that partition and then delete it?
>>
>> I don't understand what's your final goal, let's see...
>
> Guido says his goal is to remove Debian from the computer and enable it
> to boot without it.
That's what I thought but I prefer to have a confirmation for this point.
>> You have a hard disk with windows and debian installed on different
>> partitions. Fine.
>>
>> GRUB is the default bootloader which allows you to boot into Debian or
>> windows. Fine.
>>
>> You have deleted/formatted your Debian partitions. Fine. Then you
>> reinstalled it (? - this was not needed at all).
>
> Incorrect. It was needed.
(...)
Not at all. You can do many things to get GRUB removed (fixmbr) or
windows booted (using SDG) without needing to install Debian again.
>> Now what do you want to do? What do you want to get? Do you want to
>> keep your Windows install and use the windows bootloader? If yes, there
>> is a "fixmbr" command you can run from within windows recovery console
>> to restore windows NT loader.
>
> Unfortunately MS has chosen not to include that command on at least
> Vista Home for example.
(...)
There are still options for repairing it. I recently had to use "Hiren's
Boot CD" for updating the BIOS of my netbook which only had wheezy
installed on it and forced me to use an ".exe" file for updating, but
there is also "Ultimate Boot CD" and other third-party tools for doing
the job. Anyway, IIRC, windows bootloader can be restored even from a
linux LiveCD and "ms-sys" package.
Greetings,
--
Camaleón
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