AA Posted August 1, 2003 Report Share Posted August 1, 2003 How the %*@# do I erase the Master Boot Record from Linux.....? I have been reading many many mans trying to find a way to do this but I still have not found anything. # fdisk /MBR : and almost all variations of that dont seem to work... Can someone help me pleez. thanx AA edited by Ixthusdan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MottS Posted August 1, 2003 Report Share Posted August 1, 2003 Googling gives some results. Here is one to erase LILO from the mbr http://sdb.suse.de/en/sdb/html/fhassel_dei...stall_lilo.html Good luck! MottS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Floyd Posted August 1, 2003 Report Share Posted August 1, 2003 I have heard fdisk is evil. Note: The following advice will completely wipe your Master Boot Record (MBR), which contains all your partition information. DO NOT DO THIS unless you know that this is exactly the result you want - it will leave your hard drive in an unbootable state, in effect bringing it back to "factory-fresh", i.e., empty of data and requiring partitioning and formatting. dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 This fills up the MBR with zeros. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlc Posted August 1, 2003 Report Share Posted August 1, 2003 I have heard fdisk is evil.Note: The following advice will completely wipe your Master Boot Record (MBR), which contains all your partition information. DO NOT DO THIS unless you know that this is exactly the result you want - it will leave your hard drive in an unbootable state, in effect bringing it back to "factory-fresh", i.e., empty of data and requiring partitioning and formatting. dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 This fills up the MBR with zeros. This worked for me when College Linux hosed my MBR from being able to install anything else. I couldn't put any other Linux distro or windows on tell I found this command. I think it might be a cospiracy by CL. 8) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Floyd Posted August 1, 2003 Report Share Posted August 1, 2003 This worked for me when College Linux hosed my MBR from being able to install anything else. I couldn't put any other Linux distro or windows on tell I found this command. I think it might be a cospiracy by CL. It's worked for me at least a hundred times. Mostly for mswin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted August 1, 2003 Report Share Posted August 1, 2003 Just to be anal :) The MBR does not contain all the partition information. The MBR contains the boot information. The partition table (different sector) contains your partitioning layout and other data regarding each partition. The easy way to reset your MBR from linux is to do a lilo -U or lilo -U /dev/hda assuming you are using lilo. If you want to fix a lilo issue, then you fix the /etc/lilol.conf file and then type lilo to rewrite the MBR. If you can't boot into your linux to do this, you can boot off of CD1 and hit F1, type rescue. Then select mount your partitions, go to console, and type chroot /mnt Then you can type the lilo command.. All this info is in man lilo and other places. Using MS fdisk with the /mbr flag shouldn't cause you any trouble. It merely writes a standard dos boot mbr into the mbr sector only. Using fdisk to modify your partition table when you have linux extended partitions on your hard drive is what you have to watch out for. Hope that helps.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JaseP Posted August 1, 2003 Report Share Posted August 1, 2003 Shouldn't this topic really be in hardware?!?!? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted August 2, 2003 Report Share Posted August 2, 2003 Yes, I think you're right! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AA Posted August 7, 2003 Author Report Share Posted August 7, 2003 Well in the end #lilo -M /dev/hda Wiped my MBR so much so that I couldn't even install anything after that. There was some really weird shit going on, I'm not exactly sure what. Once I had wiped it Mandrake install froze when it got to the part where it detected the partitions. Red Hat did something funny too, can't remember what exactly. In the end I booted off my Win XP CD, got into the comand prompt and used "FIXMBR" which rewrote the MBR sothat just windows was available. Then I installed gentoo and this time round when I ran "lilo" it actually did something.... Can ones MBR get full...? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest GorGor Posted August 8, 2003 Report Share Posted August 8, 2003 2 suggestion on mbr (1) if you want to get rid of linux to put ms back on, you a dos floppy emergency boot disk to type fdisk /mbr where fdisk is a ms program not linux. (2) create a toms boot disk, nearly everone has heard of this, and after booting into toms, type fdisk /dev/hda and then follow the prompt hints to create a new table, option o if my brain cells can remember. Bonus (3) use Partimage to create images and they all save the mbr to each image, then you can become adventuous Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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