Linux Gazette: Clearing out the Master Boot Record (MBR)

“Experimentation is fun. After all, one of the things that makes
Linux so interesting to a number of people is the ability to
twiddle settings and see what happens – I’ll admit that it’s a
major factor for me. One of the problems with that, though, is that
some types of twiddling can lead to serious problems. A bit like
sawing off the branch you’re sitting on, in fact…”

“A number of people write to the Answer Gang with a query that
goes something like this:

“

Dear TAG: I have a stick of dynamite strapped to

the CPU, and I

’

m not afraid to use it. Now that I have your

undivided attention: I ran into a problem while trying to

reinstall

…

”

What it turns out to be – after the police, the fire department,
and the burly men in the white coats have come and gone – is that
they’ve run into the classic “fried MBR” problem: install
Linux, realize that Windows will screw up the boot record, delete
the Linux partition, try to install Windows first… OOPS. The
Windows setup runs into a problem and stops.”

Complete
Story