Obtain a bootable Windows XP CD, and use it to boot.
Wait through all the Bill-messages until you get the first prompt. Choose R to repair an existing installation.
It will search and prompt the Windows installation, showing :
1) C:\WINDOWS
choose 1, and it will ask for the Admin password. If you have one enter it or just press Enter.
C:\WINDOWS>
Now, type
C:\WINDOWS> CD ..
C:\> FIXBOOT C:
C:\> FIXMBR
C:\> BOOTCFG /rebuild
After the BOOTCFG, it will ask if you want to add the Installation it found, and to be safe answer “Y”.
saysprasad
Mon Examens Techniques 
hello,
your post about Grub Boot loader is very useful to me thanks
PLZ someone edit the article, so people WOULD NOT have 2 XP loaders in the BEGINNING!!
bootcfg is not needed and only makes things worse!!
Didn’t work for me 😦
It just added a new windows boot option to the list to choose for.
Maybe I have some sort of variant of crub. I used ubuntu installation package which was a windows exe, and was run under the windows.
Thanks for the advice, it helped me a lot; but I have a comment on this part:
> After the BOOTCFG, it will ask if you want to add the Installation it found, and to be safe answer “Y”.
I had Windows XP and Ubuntu on the same drive.
I wanted to get rid of Ubuntu, so I needed to remove GRUB first.
I did everything as it was desribed in the article; when I was asked whether I wanted to add the Installation, I pressed “yes” and called it “Loader”.
Now I still have a multi-loader window when I boot, and it has two records: “Loader” and “Windows XP”, both of them booting the same WinXP.
I repeated the actions once again, hoping that I can get rid of this second boot choice, but this time I said “no” in the last step.
Nothing happened – I still have a choice when booting. It’s not really harmful, but I think that it’s better to answer “no” in the last step.
Hello egor,
Thank you for you hack.
Thank you,
Prasad.S.R
Will this work for VIsta Home Basic??
Hello Mr. N. G. Rao,
To remove GRUB from windows vista you will have to use Vista CD/DVD and choose to repair bootloader its much simpler.
Thank you,
Prasad.S.R
Hi:
And what if I only have a recovery partition instead of a CD/DVD??
Then you are Completely SCREWED. JkJk. Just re-install ubuntu and it will bring back the GRUB bootloader. Then you can open your recovery partition
i buy a laptop then i already have a linux and i want to install windows XP,when i insert windows bootble installer it cant continue the installation…do i have to set it in linux i dont know how to fix it?
thanx a lot prasa
thx a lot.,, it’s help me soo.,,
hi
this is kareem i have one problem i have pc in multhi os is there in xp 2003 and linux l go to xp device management and remove the Linux partition and next restart the pc and getting message grub> what is problem what i do
thank you ….that is help me to remove grub boot..
Nice GRUB removal. I found out the BOOTCFG /rebuild step is not needed. I just used FIXBOOT C: and FIXMBR and my computer boots perfect.
BOOTCFG /rebuild just finds all available Windows OS add them to the boot.ini file, so on each boot you can choose which OS to start.
Thanks a lot, works like a charm. I would press ‘n’ in the last step though. But i know that you recommended it just for safety.
Trying the same with Windows 7, using the repair on the install disk does not get rid of GRUB, not entirely sure where my GRUB is booting from, there are so many config options; from boot partition/Extended/MBR/Root/Custom. And Grub is meant to be simple? grrrr
For Windows 7 or Vista…
Boot from the CD, select the repair option and launch the command prompt, type these commands
bootrec.exe /fixboot
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
Reboot
Awesome!!!!!
worked perfect
saved my school work
Thank you so so much
Beautiful! This helped me restore my Sony back to the original Windows OS.
As a note, the BIOS won’t boot to the recovery partition with Grub, only the Windows boot manager. ‘Twould explain why no key combination under the sun would work 🙂
Also, if you forget the key to press, making the recovery partition bootable worked for me.
Thanx a million man!
THANK-YOU so much man
thanks soooooooooo much it works well
worked with Windwows 8 also!
thanks man … you saved my day 🙂
This really worked. After 2 days of searchin this helped me.My system W7 THANKS
i installed ubuntu on to my pendrive …n i used my laptop for it …the grub got installed and is not letting me boot in to xp without the pendrive !!
now what do i dooo ??
plzzz help !!
Hello. I have totally screwed up everything.First i installed xp pro on my laptop, than i installed linux ubuntu 9.10. After i choosed to remove xp so i could get rid of linux. But i did a stupid mistake. Now i cant get rid of linux, and everytime i trying to boot from xp cd and press r it says couldent find a hardrive check this and this if its set correctly. I want to get rid of grub loader and linux. But i think i must get rid of grub loader first. I cant use the xp cd to remove linux and the grub loader, because i cant even install xp. I have tried a win 98 boot disk iso that i found at the net, i took away all the partitions and formated c, but it came another problem. Now i cant boot from this cd anymore. I can only reinstall ubuntu and only boot from that cd. HELP ME THIS IS REALLY HELL!!!
i followed your steps…. for the last i up y(yes)… i named the the thing 2… Then i rebooted and still had ubuntu and a third option 2!!! can u help me revert this…
I did this process, but it cant work. After remove grub it cant boot, it show insert boot media in select boot device & press a key… what can I do now…
Man you saved my life with this – thanks from the bottom of a Mac users heart!
I have an ACER AsprieOne with no cd-rom or installation CD because they don’t give you one when you buy it. IT has a windows recovery built in. After a virus crashed my Windows XP(the one that is rated as the worst in the world right now…..first time I’ve had a virus in 3 years), I installed Ubuntu and Windows XP as the 2ndary OS. Unfortunately GRUB never loaded Windows in the menu, and I went through many forums and posts about how to get Windows back on the menu, to no success. Even posted in some forums with no success.
Now Linux is going crazy with the new install Ubuntu 10 and I want to just do a full revamp to get Windows back as my main OS and Ubuntu as 2ndary, but can’t seem to get rid of GRUB to have boot into Windows. No forums, tutorials, or anything seems to do anything to remove GRUB. I even tried some USB recovery softwares to no avail. Is there a way to do this without a Windows CD?
I’ve been a linux user for about 3 months now, but I’ve rapidly lost faith in it. Lots of crashes, bugs, it’s slow, I can’t do things I used to be able to in Windows, etc. I’ve worked in IT for Windows based systems and know Windows inside and out. Enough to be able to quickly fix almost any windows problems quickly…., but when Linux crashes there seems to be a million fixes and most of them don’t work. I’m feeling like ubuntu still has years to go before it reaches enough stability to be worth moving to permanently.
you are a savior !
Thanks lot…!!!
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Hi saysprasad, i have a problem, i cant load from CD to do the recovery because when i switch on the computer, i cant get into BIOS, is there any way to do it when you are already loaded in windows xp?
I hope you can help me
Here is a way to fix dual boot option issue on this site
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_remove_boot_choices_that_i_no_longer_want.html
I had two windows xp options showing up and this fixed it.
Thanks. Its very helpful. I solved my problem i was facing after loading Fedora core 6.
Thanks
Saud
How to fix the GRUB boot loader ubuntu that error?
Its a very easy to remove grub…
thanks a lots…
Hi,
I have Sony Vaio laptop with Windows 7 installed. Later I have partitioned and installed Fedoa 8. Now I tried installing Obuntu. But couldn’t installed. So I deleted the partition created for Fedora. Now I’m unable to start my system, as it is showing Grub is deleted or some thing like that. What I should do now to restore my windows 7 OS ?
How do I fix this so that I can recover all the data along with OS
OK, my XP install disk doesn’t see my hard drive. May I go throw myself off a cliff now? What is next???
Forget about windows and just use linux mint. For around the house use, it’s just as good or better.
thank you…it worked
Hi Prasad,
i have deleted the Linux partition through windows disk management option and now,when i start my laptop the linux grub is loading ,so please tell me how to remove the Linux grub permanently and how to load into windows directly.
thanku dude,,,do u hv any personal site….plz send me
This doesn’t work (for me), the grub bootloader still apears after using the fixboot, fixmbr and bootcfg commands (and, as mentioned above, the last command is not required – and can take a while to complete). “FDisk /mbr “via DOS is probably what I need…
It worked for me. I didn’t do the last step. Thanks.
Skipped the last step and it worked great. Then I used Partition Magic to delete the Linux Ext3 and swap partitions. Next I used the redistribute free space option to restore the drive to it’s original size. Note that you cannot delete both partitions at the same time. Must be a P.M. quirk I guess. Delete the swap space first and then the Linux Ext3 partition. Remember to do a defrag when all is said and done. Can’t hurt to create a new rescue disk as well.
It TOTALLY worked for me. My Windows XP system is back. I did, however, say ‘No’ at the end, and had no problems, whatsoever
will this formats the computer
is it safe guys
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