Need to get GRUB off of my drives badly!

[RAMWolff]

Hiya,

I'm new here. I as so so very excited to see that Ubuntu 9.04 was a joy to use, instantly on line, sound works, auto updates and all that. One issue... GRUB >:( I HATE that OS loader. It's corrupt. I can't get it off of my drives. At this point, since I caved and deleted the Linux partition, it's still there and throwing errors. I really really need a way to totally destroy this nuisance.

I run Vista Home Premium 64 bit on my Hitachi hard drive and then had the second hard drive partitioned to run Ubuntu 9.04 (/, /home, SWAP). /home and SWAP are still there as I don't want to loose all my stuff just yet but the main / partition is re-formatted. I have used the Acronis Suite to make a shiny new Logical partition and format it as EXT 3 (which is the same as my /home partition) awaiting the new installation.

So I thought be deleting and reformatting the main / partition is would have destroyed that awful GRUB OS Manager... NOPE. Still there, throwing errors. So I had to make a boot disk using the Acronis tools that I now just leave in the drive so I can get booted into Windows. At first the GRUB error was like 25 now it's error 15. No idea what those mean. I just love cryptic messages! ::)

I've tried using the Vista reload disk to run a Repair but it just spins up, goes through the motions of loading the needed files and then gets to the main load screen (black with MS logo and the running green dots) and just sits there. I left it for a whole day thinking it needed more time but came home from work (10 hours later) to find the same screen. So I had to do a cold shutdown and back to keeping the Ubuntu disk in the drive to be able to boot (that's when I had the brilliant idea to buy Acronis and kill the Linux partition and create a new one but NOT install Linux just yet).

So I really really want to know if there is a sure fire set of tools that I can use to HUNT DOWN AND DESTROY GRUB?? I want that out of there. Of course I'll then try install Ubuntu back into the formatted partition on my second hd (Seagate) and hope for the best with GRUB. Sure wish there was an option to NOT have GRUB installed!! :blink:

So there's my long story and my request. I surely hope that someone with some knowledge can assist me, I really really want this fixed. It's quite frustrating to know that this little tiny boot loader is causing so much stress!!

Thanks much

Richard ;-)~

[Pedro]

The problem seems to be that you deleted (?) the root partition, and GRUB doesn't 'know' about it. So it spits the error, because it can't find that partition to boot from.
You need to either reinstall Ubuntu, if that's what you want to do, and it will reinstall GRUB to a working condition.
If you want Vista only, your options are the Vista cd, so you can use 'fixmbr', or some other CD to do the same thing, which is reinstall the Vista bootloader.

Which way grasshopper? :)

[Acronis Support]

Hello RAMWolff and Pedro,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/)

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

To deactivate GRUB you should just perform fix MBR on your system. Here are the instructions for Vista:

Note: please do not use instructions on XP systems (also, do not use fix MBR commands intended for XP on your Vista).

Please repair Vista Boot Configuration Data in the following way:

1. Put the Windows Vista installation disc in the CD\DVD disc drive, and then (re)start the computer;
2. Press a key when you are prompted;
3. Select language, time, currency, keyboard or input method, and then click Next;
4. Click Repair your computer;
5. Click the operating system that you want to repair, and then click Next;
6. In the System Recovery Options dialog box click Command Prompt;
7. Type the following:
Bootrec.exe /FixMbr
Bootrec.exe /FixBoot

If you want to completely rebuild Boot Configuration Data, then you should issue the following command:
Bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd
This command scans all disks for installations that are compatible with Windows Vista. Additionally, this option lets you select the installations that you want to add to the Boot Configuration Data store.

Instructions of fix MBR for other systems can be found here (http://kb.acronis.com/content/1507).

Thank you.
--
Alexander Nikolsky