Re: [opensuse] deleting grub as boot manager on the hard disk (error 22)

On Thursday 24 July 2008 06:49:39 pm David Haller wrote:
Hello,

On Thu, 24 Jul 2008, Rajko M. wrote:
On Thursday 24 July 2008 05:04:31 pm Franz Preihs wrote:
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

With Vista is:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1 count=440
otherwise Vista will not boot.

That leaves the partitiontable intact.

Though I have answered the question, not assuming that there is another hard
disk in the system, and he wants to format whole hard disk so preservation of
partition table is not necessary.

Or use 'fixmbr' from a WinNT/XP/Vista Recovery Console.

It seems that was already done without result, which gives Carlos idea that
there are 2 disks and OP is trying everything on wrong one very good chance
to be true.

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



--
Regards, Rajko
http://en.opensuse.org/Portal needs helpful hands.
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