Member Avatar for warthogism

so, previously, Grub would start and give me the option of the starting either Linux (fedore core) or winxp.

Using partitionmagic, I deleted the linux partition and joined it with winxp. When I rebooted, I get a GRUB prompt ("grub>"). I now have no idea how to get it start windows. Any help is appreciated.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by RoyalPeak

Dani AI

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Short explanation and context: when the Linux partition that held GRUB's second stage is removed, the GRUB code left in the MBR can no longer find the files it expects and drops to the grub prompt. ran into exactly that; the quick chainload trick got Windows booted temporarily, and both and pointed to ways of making the fix permanent.

Temporary vs permanent

  • Temporary: chainloading from the grub prompt (what the OP used) is a practical stopgap to get Windows running without touching the MBR.
  • Permanent: if you intend to keep only Windows, restore the Windows boot code to the MBR with the Windows repair tools appropriate for your version; if you want Linux back, either recover the deleted partition or reinstall GRUB from a live Linux environment.

Common, pragmatic steps (summary)

  • Boot the appropriate Windows repair environment and run the repair commands for your Windows generation (examples shown below). These replace GRUB with the Windows boot code.
# Windows XP (Recovery Console)
fixmbr
fixboot
# Vista / 7 / 8 / 10+ (Recovery Environment)
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /rebuildbcd
  • If the partition was accidentally removed or changed by PartitionMagic, use a partition-recovery tool (for example, TestDisk) before overwriting the MBR, since overwriting can make recovery harder.
  • If you want to keep Linux: boot a live distro, mount and chroot into your root, and reinstall GRUB (for example with grub-install and then regenerate the config).

Precautions

  • Back up the MBR and partition table first (an image of the first sectors), and confirm which partition is marked active. If unsure, stop and make a full disk image before further changes.

Recommended Answers

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Member Avatar for frrossk

Boot from a win98/whatever bootdisk, run "fdisk /mbr" to clean MBR (I assume grub was installed in MBR), and reboot.

Member Avatar for warthogism

thank you for the help frrossk. I saw somewhere else on this forum that you could force grub to load windows

grub>root (hd0,0)
grub>chainloader +1
grub>boot

That got me into windows. Then my friends suggested just as you did. Again, thanks for the effort. I appreciate it. the problem is now resolved.
:thumbsup:

Member Avatar for RoyalPeak

so, previously, Grub would start and give me the option of the starting either Linux (fedore core) or winxp.

Using partitionmagic, I deleted the linux partition and joined it with winxp. When I rebooted, I get a GRUB prompt ("grub>"). I now have no idea how to get it start windows. Any help is appreciated.

you can follow like this:
(1)grub>rootnoverify (hd0,0)
(2)grub>chainloader +1
(3)grub>boot
(4)grub>Windows

OK~~~~~~~~~~

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