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General discussion

HELP !!!! Need to Remove GRUB

by Goofy1 May 9, 2006 3:02AM PDT

Bought a used hardrive.
When I went to install it I found a partition that was taking up about 10Gigs of space.
When I would allow the comp to go through normal boot sequence it would bring up a GRUB from Gentoo Linux.
I have tried EVERY Piece of software I can find from Partition Magic to Fdisk to try to eliminate this partition and the GRUB with no success.

How can I possibly remove this Gentoo GRUB from my boot sector and eliminate the corresponding partition so that I can format and be able to use the Entire Hardrive ???

I tried ordering a copy of Gentoo from their website.
Was thinking if I reloaded it, I might be able to get rid of it. Its been a month since I ordered the software and no response from Gentoo. And yes, I have went back to their website several times since then, and have sent several emails to the listed emails claiming to be support with no response.

I need the full capacity of my Harddrive.
Can anyone out there help me ?

Thanks

Discussion is locked

16 Posts
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Two methods come to mind
by chuckieu May 9, 2006 5:30AM PDT

If you have broadband access, you can download a program like Dban (link below), burn as a ISO disc and use it to
wipe entire disc. Actually, small enough that dial-up might work.
2nd way is to use a 98se boot-disc if you can borrow one and fdisk. Delete the non-dos partition and reset partition/s to your liking. If you are going to reinstall
linux, don't format. If installing Windows XP, it will
format as you install. Hope this helps. chuck

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FDISK Doesn't work
by Goofy1 May 10, 2006 3:06AM PDT

I have tried Partition Magic, MS Fdisk, I even let XP loader try to remove this with no luck, As well as a few other Disk Utilies I've found on the net that have had No Effect on this.
I have even Emailed authors of Gentoo Linux from their website to seek help with this and have NEVER received any replies either.

The problem is that whomever removed the Gentoo Linux that was on this HD did not type in the correct command line for deletion of the Gentoo and left the GRUB Loader behind this partition, which also contains the Boot Sector of the HD.

One thing that I did run across on the Net is that Gentoo seems to be aimed more towards Apple Mac's than at PC's. I'm wondering if Mac-Fdisk would be able to remove the partition?
Since I do not have any access to a Mac, this becomes a moot point.
Just curious, Does anyone know if Mac-Fdisk works any differently than MS Fdisk.

Other than reloading Gentoo all over again, I have ran out of ideas on how to remove the GRUB and its partition.

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HOW DID YOU USE FDISK?
by r. proffitt Forum moderator May 10, 2006 3:25AM PDT

Many forget to disable the BIOS virus protection. Many more forget about the FDISK /MBR command.

Bob

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I'm curious too!
by chuckieu May 10, 2006 5:42AM PDT

I've used the fdisk portion of the 98se Boot Disk to do exactly the same thing you are trying to do. The ONLY time it didn't work was a dying (dead) Maxtor hard drive that I had to RMA. The wipe program I cited (Killdisk is another) will wipe one partition or the whole disk. Then you make new partitions. chuck

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Drive manufacturer
by Ixthusdan May 11, 2006 3:36AM PDT

Go to their website and download their utility. It can do a low level format or you could zero the drive. Either way, anything on the drive will be destroyed, including the partition table. But, all the other things already listed in this thread will also do the job. Perhaps you should specifically tell what you are doing and we could spot the problem. In short, there is nothing magic about gentoo or grub. They are just an os and a bootloader.

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Not all is at it seems !!!
by Goofy1 May 12, 2006 2:45PM PDT

I guess I should of put in my originating note ALL of the software that I have tried on this particular drive.

Yes , I had already contacted the Drive Maker website, and their low level formatter would not touch this.

Yes I had tried fdisk /mbr ...
Yes I have tried Norton Utilities.
Shoot, I have tried so many different programs on this HD that I can't even remember all of their titles now

I even tried putting ubuntu back onto this drive only to get the error mesage that what I had was the wrong version to be able to delete the existing partition and GRUB loader.

I have sent over 10 emails to people that are listed as being susposedly contact names for gentoo/ubuntu about this and have yet to receive a single reply from any of them.

The only software I didn't try was MAC-FDISK simply because I don't own a Mac, nor do I know anyone that does to try.

However, I did finally find an answer to this problem.

I put it into a machine as a second drive and used a couple different Hex Editors to finally zero out the boot sector.
Once I had physically removed all of the GRUB from the boot sector I was able to use fdisk to finish the job and reformat teh drive.

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Glad it's resolved
by Ixthusdan May 12, 2006 4:09PM PDT

But neither gentoo, ubuntu, nor anyone has anything to do with this curious problem, since it would the seem the drive has some kind of problem. Frankly, if a drive manufacturer's utilities will not communicate with the drive, I wouldn't trust it with my data.

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I agree
by chuckieu May 13, 2006 3:13AM PDT

When I've seen this behavior, it was a dead or dying HDD.
Did you download, transfer to appropriate disc (usually floppy) the manufacturer's diagnostic? I would do that, especially if unit is still in warranty. If not, I would
still want to know it's condition before I trusted it. For what it's worth. chuck

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Diagnostics
by Goofy1 May 13, 2006 1:18PM PDT

I ran the same HD software I used initially, (got it from HDD Manufacturer website) After I had literally manually zero'd out the boot sector, And now it says that all sectors show good and the total integrity of the drive at 100% with no sign of failure ...

So there HAD to be something in the way that the partition for the boot sector had been setup with the gentoo that kept it from being altered via normal avenues.

My thanks to everyone that tried to help me out !!!

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Nothing special with gentoo
by Ixthusdan May 13, 2006 1:38PM PDT

I have used gentoo among many linux distros, too numerous to list. There is no special way that gentoo sets up a drive. In fact, I generally have at least 3 operating systems installed on my main computer at any time, usually at least one of them being a beta of some distro. Gemtoo is a fun sort of distro. The last time I installed it was from a console inside of a Mandriva distro. I did not want to be off line for 2 days while I did a boot strap installation.

I would really encourage you to thoroughly check the drive for errors. I would preform some read/write tests for 24 hours to see if it errors. I suspect the drive's processor as the problem, or some internal component.

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Diagnostic program doesn't come with
by chuckieu May 14, 2006 4:28AM PDT

hard drive usually. I would get that and run it. A tech
may have to tell you what the code generated means. We're
trying to help. Can't make you, but if it goes belly-up, don't complain. chuck

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This Commands will help U?
by markborges May 14, 2006 5:29PM PDT

I understand that ur not able to remove grub loader.
U can do one of this things. I feel u r aware of debug command in Bootable 98se. Boot with bootable 98 then type this following commands ,Note: By using this commands u will lost the data on your Harddisk Please do on your risk

Go to a:
type debug press enter
then type this commands
f 200 l 1000 0 (enter)
a100(enter)
movax,301(enter)
movbx,200(enter)
movcx,01(enter)
movdx,80(enter)
int 13(enter)
int 20(enter)
g(enter)
(enter)
q(enter)

then restart your pc u should be not getting grub loader it will show u as its a new harddisk

Cheers,
Sunil Gummapu
sunil@repairman.com

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I'd replace the drive!
by JBengeII May 15, 2006 5:45PM PDT

I was going to say that removing grub , I use the winxp cd and go to recovery console and use fixmbr or something like that but, I had a laptop drive that I thought I fixed by fdisking,diskpart-(whatever you use to delete a partition)it would work for awhile but apparently it was a hardware problem because it would go into a BSOD( blue screen of death)and was unable to recover booting. I think it would be easier to replace the drive, besides who knows what's on the disk.. trojans keyloggers etc.

My $.02

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Please Read ! Belive it or not !!!
by Goofy1 May 16, 2006 2:00AM PDT

I appreciate all the people that helped with software suggestions.

To all of you that have suggested getting rid of the HDD ..
I will REPEAT this Just for you folks.
I will take You folks step by step since I appearantly was to vague for you in my other postings about my FIXING this harddrive.

I was able to manually zero out the boot sector of the harddrive to get rid of All traces of the GRUB loader via a Hex Editor.
(If you don't know what a Hex Editor is or how it works, I will gladly send you a few URL's so you can read up on the better one's available on the net today. )
Then AFTER I Zero'd out the Boot Sector with the Hex Editor, I USED THE LOW LEVEL FORMATTER that the Hard Drive Manufacturer Fedex'd to me. I then ran the Manufacturers' Diagnostic Software and everything came back all right, NO PROBLEMS on any sector, no signs of emminant failure, The Earth isn't going stop circling the sun.

From scouring the internet I have found that GRUB is the bane of Linux loaders, and that I was NOT the only person to ever have GRUB do this to a Harddrive !!!

To those of you that have never experienced this problem with GRUB, Let me reassure you that it is a Real Problem, and it was Not isolated to just my harddrive.

GRUB is such a problem at taking over the boot sector of Hardrives it is loaded to, I have now found software that was originally developed specifically to deal with the problem Of GRUB NOT REMOVING itself during the Uninstall of the Linux that put it there in the first place.
I found this software on Linux Forums where I found more than several dozen other people that had the EXACT Same Experience with GRUB that I did.

Sooo .. Belive it or not, GRUB Can take over a boot sector in such a way that "normal" removal methods have No Effect on it, WITHOUT ANYTHING BEING WRONG THE HARDRIVE !!!

PS,
When I first noticed this problem, I took this harddrive to my local University Computer Science Dept. where the Linux Grad Class spent almost 6 hours doing everything I had tried, using todays accepted ways of using Fdisk, partition proggys, and even Reloading and Uninstalling the gentoo linux with No Luck.

So, To reiterate, GRUB Can take over the Boot sector of a harddrive in such a manner that conventional mainstream Partitioning Programs (Fdisk, etc.) can NOT
remove or alter it any way.
This does NOT mean the Hardrive is going have any kind of emminant catastrophic failure.

It just means that there IS A Bug in the GRUB Loader that needs to be fixed.

Just because you might not of experienced this problem, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

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Actually, we weren't unclear
by chuckieu May 16, 2006 6:46AM PDT

about your problem. A number of us weren't just throwing suggestions out there for trial. Many of the people here have been using Unix/Linux for years, are trained and working techs, and at least a few (like myself) have had this particular problem before. No skin off our ........
if you don't want to download and use a small, free
diagnostic program to make sure of the health of your hard drive. Like I say, been there, done that. chuck

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Easy fix! No erasing of hard disk
by rbg328 May 16, 2006 1:34PM PDT

ok first find your Windows XP Disc
boot from the cd (usually just snatch it and put it in the drive and boot normally)
1. When it loads the XP installation, push R for Recovery Console.
2. When you get logged on or whatever necessary, type fixmbr
2. That erases grub and over writes it with the original Windows XP boot file.
3. Google a program called SuperFDisk
4. Download it and burn it to a disc using a program like DeepBurner or Nero in .iso format
5. Click on your partition that you need deleted, click secure erase and problem solved.

You could try Active@ KillDisk. This low-level formats your disk which would be useful for you too.

Best of luck!
Ryan

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