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We have a few ooooold boxes that were set up to dual boot Windows/Debian using grub. We re-imaged these boxes in order to use them as web servers but the boot manager still comes up.

How can we get rid of grub so that it just boots straight into Windows? I've never had to deal with this kind of thing before and I'm kinda stumped.

Thanks!

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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You don't mention the version of Windows, but since they're "ooooold", I'd guess Windows XP or Windows Server 2003.

Boot a Windows setup CD, choose "Repair" and the "Recovery Console", logon to the Windows instance when prompted, and do a "FIXMBR". That will write a Windows MBR onto the machine and blow away the GRUB MBR.

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  • i think FIXBOOT might also be needed, but i am not certain, no risk if its only windows afaik
    – Jimsmithkka
    Aug 24, 2009 at 16:10
  • FIXBOOT re-writes the partition boot record. There shouldn't be any GRUB code there in a Windows partition. There's no harm in doing FIXBOOT too, though.
    – Evan Anderson
    Aug 24, 2009 at 16:29
  • Again, while all three answers are good, this is the one I'm going with because I'm not much of a sysadmin and am cravenly afraid of fdisk in general. Probably something I need to deal with eventually ...
    – wcm
    Aug 24, 2009 at 17:44
  • But the fdisk one you can do while normally booted, instead of getting out the recovery disk.
    – Bill Weiss
    Aug 24, 2009 at 19:40
  • @Bill: Okay-- I'll bite. What versions of Windows can you do "fdisk /MBR" on? There's no "fdisk" on Windows XP Professional, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 Professional, and Windows Vista Business. I'm guessing that it hasn't been added back in Windows Server 2008 or Windows 7. The poster said that the systems were "ooooold", but I'm guessing they're not Windows ME, which was the last version of Windows that included FDISK.EXE, to my knowledge.
    – Evan Anderson
    Aug 24, 2009 at 20:09
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http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-how-to-uninstall-grub/

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Easier than those.. boot into Windows, open a cmd.exe, and do:

fdisk /mbr

Reboot and see if it worked.

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