[Justin_G]

hey, i had have 2 hardrives 1 of them with windows xp on it, the other has vista and ubuntu on it. i wanted to format the one with vista and ubuntu on it and i tryed to do it with parttion magic. After reboot all i get is the grub error 17. all i want is my windows xp back

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I'm not sure if I understand you 100%. Do you want to get rid if Linux? If booting to Windows is all you care about and you don't want to have a boot option for Ubuntu, you can boot from a MSDOS floppy (or cd) and restore the default windows boot manager by typing FDISK /MBR.
Warning, you won't be able to boot into Linux after doing this.

If you just want to fix grub so you can choose whether to boot into Windows or Ubuntu, don't worry, your problem is probably just a configuration error.

We need to see what your current grub configuration files say, so please post your /boot/grub/menu.lst or your /boot/grub/grub.conf (whichever one you have). You can access these by booting from a live cd.

- Matt

[mpfeif101]

I'm not sure if I understand you 100%. Do you want to get rid if Linux? If booting to Windows is all you care about and you don't want to have a boot option for Ubuntu, you can boot from a MSDOS floppy (or cd) and restore the default windows boot manager by typing FDISK /MBR.
Warning, you won't be able to boot into Linux after doing this.

If you just want to fix grub so you can choose whether to boot into Windows or Ubuntu, don't worry, your problem is probably just a configuration error.

We need to see what your current grub configuration files say, so please post your /boot/grub/menu.lst or your /boot/grub/grub.conf (whichever one you have). You can access these by booting from a live cd.

- Matt

[BeanLovesCrackers]

Also you can boot from your XP CD, choose Recovery console and type "fixmbr"

[Justin_G]

thanks for the reply matt,

yea I dont want linux anymore i was trying to format the partition that had linux on it when i got the error. and where can i find a msdos cd?

[mpfeif101]

http://www.optimizin...l/bootdisk.html has instructions.

BeanLovesCrackers's method will work as well.

- Matt

[Justin_G]

I don't have a floppy drive and i don't have a recovery cd. can you tell me were i can download the ISO for either of these?

[Kemasa]

Many times the Linux install disk has the option of restoring the Windoze boot loader. Boot the CD and select "rescue" at the boot prompt. You then should get a list of menu options, one of which is to restore the boot loader.

[mpfeif101]

Or download http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

It has a DOS boot disk on it (along with many other great tools).