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Thread ID: 111226 2010-07-19 01:48:00 Remove Windows 7 bootloader from storage hard drives Agent_24 (57) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
1119984 2010-07-19 01:48:00 Once upon a time I installed Windows 7, and had to use startup recovery to fix it (can't remember why)

Might not seem such a bad thing but for some reason it put the bootloader not just on the system drive but also on my two 1TB storage drives for some reason (most likely because Microsoft in their infinite stupidity decided to give you absolutely no choice as to where it sticks anything)


Anyway, I now have an issue when I install Linux, it detects 2 extra Windows 7 installations which don't exist and adds them to Grub.

How do I get rid of the bootloader\boot sector\whatever from these 2 drives and stop everything thinking they contain Windows 7?
Agent_24 (57)
1119985 2010-07-19 05:25:00 How To: Remove Windows 7 Bootloader

Boot off XP
1. Recovery Console
2. Fixboot
3. Fixmbr
pctek (84)
1119986 2010-07-19 06:01:00 Won't that write the XP bootloader to them instead? Agent_24 (57)
1119987 2010-07-19 10:59:00 ...How do I get rid of the bootloader\boot sector\whatever from these 2 drives and stop everything thinking they contain Windows 7?

MBRtool might do the job.

www.diydatarecovery.nl
rumpty (2863)
1119988 2010-07-23 02:49:00 I ended up using DISKPART to mark the partitions as inactive (I think this was the main problem)

Then I booted Ubuntu and deleted the Boot directory and bootmgr file (Windows wouldn't let me)

After that I performed a kernel upgrade in Ubuntu and it did not find the 2 non-existent Windows 7 installations!
Agent_24 (57)
1119989 2010-07-23 02:56:00 EasyBCD may have fixed it. But thats for windows Speedy Gonzales (78)
1119990 2010-07-23 02:58:00 Handy to know Agent 24. KarameaDave (15222)
1119991 2010-07-23 06:10:00 EasyBCD may have fixed it. But thats for windows

I tried that before I posted here, it doesn't work, because the rogue bootloaders weren't known to Windows 7 itself.

I think EasyBCD is just a GUI for BCDEDIT, and BCDEDIT didn't know they existed either, so it couldn't remove them (it only shows up the real Win 7 and XP)
Agent_24 (57)
1119992 2010-07-23 07:05:00 Why not simply remove them from the grub config?

Edit the file /boot/grub/menu.lst (also sometimes known as /boot/grub/grub.conf), and remove the sections related to the nonexistent Windows installs. These sections will usually be near the bottom of the file, and will be very easy to identify - they're labelled with a 'title' line.
Erayd (23)
1119993 2010-07-23 07:50:00 Next kernel update would just bring them back again, and I'd have to keep doing it.

Besides, if the PC then decides to try and boot from one of those drives it'll hang at some boot error.

Now, the BIOS just skips to the next drive because it's not active.
Agent_24 (57)
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