Re-Installing GRUB with only NTFS Drives

I used to dual boot openSuse and XP but I yanked out my linux HDD and now my Windows will not boot, I get a GRUB error 22 (missing partition).

This PC does not have a CDrom so I can not simply use the fixmbr from an XP recovery console.

I have booted into opensuse Live CD (Flash Drive) and tried to use Yast but it gives me an error it can not write because of the partitioning. I also tried the recover shell but am totally lost trying to re-write GRUB because I can not find the menu.lst file.

What else can I do? I know Ubuntu can fix this but wanted to find a way with Suse.

You can’t use grub if you pulled the Linux drive or removed the OS
Are you saying that you now plan to use windows only? Could you make room for a small install of Ubuntu on the windows HD? Say about 6GB, just enough to install it and get it’s bootloader installed to boot your system
Or make a flash drive with supergrubdisk on it, that should let you boot XP

I was afraid of that, I will re-install opensuse on a small drive for the time being. Once in an installed environment can I switch back over to Windows boot loader? I just want to know if I can, I doubt I will ever do it.

On 2011-05-19 06:06, psytropic wrote:
>
> I was afraid of that, I will re-install opensuse on a small drive for
> the time being. Once in an installed environment can I switch back over
> to Windows boot loader? I just want to know if I can, I doubt I will
> ever do it.

You need to run fdisk /mbr from windows, IIRC.


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

Carlos E. R. wrote:
>
> You need to run fdisk /mbr from windows, IIRC.
>
I think on xp the command fixmbr replaced fdisk /mbr. But both commands do
the same.


PC: oS 11.3 64 bit | Intel Core2 Quad Q8300@2.50GHz | KDE 4.6.3 | GeForce
9600 GT | 4GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.6.0 | nVidia
ION | 3GB Ram

Download and compile ms-sys](http://ms-sys.sourceforge.net/) from your Linux live system. Then use it to write a Windows MBR.