Getting rid of Grub

**fingers99** · 08-09-2003, 07:17 PM

After a dailiance with Grub I've now decided to go back to Lilo.

Question is, (this is a Linux only system) how do I get grub off my mbr?

Would a free DOS boot disk do it? I've seen a menu entry somewhere.......

**fingers99** · 08-09-2003, 11:22 PM

OK, I found a freeDOS bootdisk on my SuSE installation (sans documentation) and downloaded a DOS 6.22 bootdisk from off the net. Problem is that these are images: there's no obvious way to write them to a floppy (I've tried all the obviouys ways and they don't work).

I think I need to use dd, but after reading the man page I'm (as usual) more confused than ever. Any advice gratefully recieved.

(BTW, isn't it a bit sad that there are no -- I think -- Linux internal tools available to zap an mbr

)

"To fix your mbr, first install Windows..........."

**garyng** · 08-10-2003, 12:47 AM

just install lilo as usual and GRUB would go. Afterall, every boot loader install would automatically uninstall the previous one as they just write to the same 512 byte sector of a HD.

**andmalc** · 08-10-2003, 02:04 AM

If you ever feel you really want to get complete control over your mbr there's a utility that comes with knoppix called 'install-mbr'

It's most basic use would be if you'd installed one or more boot loaders into partition boot sectors instead of into the mbr and you wanted to switch which partition is set active in the partition table. Of course, it'll do lots else besides.

Just curious - why are you switching back to Lilo?

**fingers99** · 08-10-2003, 04:04 AM

Just curious - why are you switching back to Lilo?

Well, better the beast you know: I always found Grub better (when I could get it working) but I don't like (or understand) the syntax: it's just too free form for me.

Anyway, I discovered I was pointing lilo at the wrong place (so I managed to overwrite the mbr in the end) and then that my bios had somehow decided (I'm sure I'd reset it to the proper values) that my 40gig drive was 8gig. Changing that (and -- although I'm not sure this was necessary, using linear rather than lba32 -- will test later), using my old lilo.conf with all references to SuSE commented out, did it. Only took 12 hours!

I put it down to the heatwave we have in the UK.......

Anyway, thanks to everyone for their help.