unistalling debian and recovering windows without a CD drive

[martinjakubik]

hi folks,

I tried to use the instructions about uninstalling debian on this forum to reclaim a debian partition. this seemed to work fine, but now I need to boot from a windows install in order to run fixmbr.

The problem is that my laptop has no cd drive.
- I have my original windows xp install cd
- I can get my laptop to boot from a USB drive

But, if I just copy the iso of my windws cd to my USB key, my machine won't boot from it. How can I make a bootable USB key containing the image of my windows install cd so that I can get to the recovery console?

thanks,
martin

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

You can repair the MBR using SuperGRUB. It comes on the latest version (version 4.4) of the Parted Magic LiveCD, and you can make the USB version by copying the files from the ISO image to the USB drive and running syslinux:

Parted Magic News

[martinjakubik]

Hi, it's nice to see a quick reply. I just got a chance to try supergrub today.

I was able to create a liveUSB key and boot into supergrub. Unfortunately, when I followed the directions on the supergrub wiki, I get stuck on "selecthd".

Here's what I did:
Choose Language & HELP ) -> English Super Grub Disk -> Windows -> Fix Boot of Windows -> Syslinux

Here's what I see:
-----

Booting 'Syslinux'

set choose_title="Hard Disk to UnInstall GRUB"
selecthd

-----

Then it just hangs with that message. What's happening?

thanks,
martin

[chris81]

Hi.

I'll take a chance with the following :

- If you can type in the shell when it's written selecthd, then try with hd0.

- If you can't type in the shell, then try to fix your mbr using your xp system boot floppy

[martinjakubik]

- If you can type in the shell when it's written selecthd, then try with hd0.

I couldn't type in the shell, but I fixed it by downloading a different version of supergrub disk.

for info...
The version with which I had the problem was the one that came with PartedMagic.
The version that worked came directly from the SuperGrubDisk site.
The version that worked did not get stuck on selecthd.

- If you can't type in the shell, then try to fix your mbr using your xp system boot floppy

No floppy drive. I couldn't get anything out of Microsoft prods.