[FIXED]: remove linux, and then install Windows XP

[John Abreau]

Zhao Peng wrote:

> Then, I did "fdisk /mbr" when booted from floppy.
> 
> But after this, the system did show "missing operating system" whenever 
> the machine was restarted.
> 
> Isn't is true that ""fdisk /mbr" and "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 
> count=1" are supposed to achieve same purpose?

Both commands got rid of grub, the linux boot loader that was trying to 
load the system you had deleted. But they're doing two different things 
to accomplish that.

"fdisk /mbr" overwrites the MBR with the MS Windows boot loader code.

"dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1" overwrites the MBR with 512 
  bytes that are all zero.

It's the MS Windows boot loader that's reporting "missing operating 
system".

-- 
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
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