Oblitterate GRUB
Installing Ubuntu 8.10 on a USB stick is really handy. That enabled me to remove a trojan from my laptop that I couldn’t remove from Windows itself. There was one drawback; GRUB got stuck on my MBR (Master Boot Record) pointing to the USB stick. So without the stick the machine couldn’t be booted. Forgetting the stick at work yesterday made the problem desperate – GRUB had to go promptly!
I read many hints on different forums, most pointing at two options of how to remove GRUB:
1) Boot and repair the MBR using a DOS command – I have no floppy so that option was out
2) Use the recovery CD/DVD – My system is an upgrade so the CD I have (a genuine one I might stress!) doesn’t have this feature (or I didn’t see it when I tried it).
I used the Master GRUB Disk to boot (which actually worked) but tested to recover it from the disk, where things went from bad to worse. The start-up manager was then gone to. ARGHHHH!!!!
Browsing the net again I finally found this piece of comfort;
Download, burn and boot from it.
Select language and keyboard layout whereafter you press the “Repair” link. I had to have it repair twice, where I believe the first one did recover the MBR only and the other did recover the mess the GRUB disk caused. Again, my love for Linux has further deepened … NOT!!!!
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