remove mbr

[Vic 970]

I have had w98se and w2k dual booting. I have just formatted the partition that w2k was on and now I want to clear the mbr so that the choice to boot either w98 or 2k doesn't come up. and the pc just boots direct into 98 as a single o/s.

[pave_spectre]

I believe for that situation you may be able to boot to command line from a win98 boot disk and run [B]fdisk /mbr[B] and then rebooting should take you straight into 98.
Ive done similar numerous times from dual boots using various native and third-party bootloaders without incident.

[Rick]

You will also need to find and delete the Ntboot loader and all it’s files. ( boot.ini, ntdetect.com,ntld )
If the fdisk /mbr doesn’t complete the job.
You can boot from the same win98 boot floppy and run
“sys c:” from the A:\ command prompt
This will transfer the io.sys, msdos.sys and command.com back onto the boot drive and reset the MBR for you as well

JUST make sure the win98 boot floppy is the same version as the win98 you have installed on the hdd

[Paul Komski]

You don't have to change the boot-loaders or change the mbr - just edit boot.ini to read:-

[boot loader]
timeout=30
C:\
[operating systems]
C:\="Microsoft Windows 98"

The timeout is immaterial if there is only one option under operating systems.

Don't use sys C: from a boot floppy UNLESS you have first backed-up your original msdos.sys file.

[Vic 970]

hi paul,

too late I'm afraid. I went the fdisk /mbr root plus deleting the stated files, but this did not work. so I did the sys c; and it's now booting into w98. I did not bck msdos.sys so what might you suggest be the outcome of that? and could I get it back (should it be required) from CD ?

[Paul Komski]

He He - I was being overly cautious maybe but there can be problems if things, such as the Windows folder, are not as per defaults. Also installing a WinME MSDOS.SYS onto Win98 and vice versa can cause problems.

You can have a comprehensive read about the file at http://members.aol.com/axcel216/msdos.htm if you want.

You now have a Win98 mbr pointing to msdos.sys (or winboot.ini if it should happen to exist) and everything sounds hunky dory; you had had a win2k mbr pointing to ntldr, which in turn pointed to msdos.sys - so you have just avoided one extra manouvre during boot up - and that cant be a bad thing I s'pose.

;)