How do I completely uninstall Linux Mandriva 2007?
I tried simply formatting the partitions holding Mandriva, but the boot screen when I restart my PC didn’t go away and then it didn’t boot at all. So I reinstalled Mandriva and everything’s back to normal. But I want to free the space used by Linux.
So how do I properly unistall it, including the Operating System Selection Screen. I believe its called bootloader. How do I get rid of it?
Tagged with: boot screen • bootloader • Linux • mandriva • operating system • partitions • selection screen • system selection
Filed under: Mandrake
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
This should not really be a problem for you.
The bootloader {perhaps LILO or GRUB} is written to an area of the hard disk called the Master Boot Record, or MBR for short. It is a 512 byte block, with 3 parts: 1) boot code/loader – 446 bytes, 2) partition table – 64 bytes, and 3) signature – 2 bytes.
If you plan to install a new OS on the drive the problem will be taken care of during the installation of the new OS, since it will write the MBR according to its needs.
Since erasing or writing the MBR of the wrong drive can cause a big problem, it is best to let the replacement OS {windows or another Linux distribution perhaps} take care of this for you.
If you feel you must erase the mbr and you are absolutely certain of the drive’s device name, how you proceed depends on the software tools you have available. If you can boot a windows recovery disk that has the utility FDISK, you can use the undocumented command "fdisk x: /mbr" where x: is the drive where the MBR is to be erased.
If you have a bootable Linux rescue or utility disk you can use ‘dd’ to do the same thing. For example, if the drive with the MBR to be erased is ‘/dev/hda’ then erase the MBR partition table and signature with:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
To be sure that you understand, ….your system does not boot now because you have removed boot kernel and other start-up programs by reformatting the partitions that were in use with Mandriva 2007. This did NOT erase the MBR so it is normal for the old bootloader to be displayed, …but be non-functional until replaced by a new OS.