Grub on a computer that hasn't had linux??

[awaj]

Ok, so my new computer has recently started to boot to grub even though I don't have it on it. I think it might have something to do with one of the hard drives that WAS formated. The problem is temporarily fixed by making sure it is booting to the right one. I can't see anything through windows 7, is there anything I can do to fix it with out loosing stuff on the drive that may have it?

The hard drive was from my old computer

[Paul Komski]

It's one of four scenarios that I can think of.

1. You have a Linux boot disk in the floppy or CD or USB drive.
2. The wrong partition is marked as active and has a GRUB partition boot sector on it.
3. GRUB is on the MBR of the currently chosen HDD in the BIOS setup as the priority boot drive.
4. Boot.ini points to a default "grubldr file" on the C: drive.

Solve by:

1. Removing the disk or drive.
2. Change the active partition to the correct boot partition.
3. Overwrite GRUB by replacing it with standard code. For WinME and earlier use fdisk /mbr from a DOS boot floppy; for Win2K to earlier than Vista boot to the installation CD and run fixmbr from the recovery console; for Vista (and presumably 7) its Bootrec.exe /FixMbr (http://www.vistaheads.com/forums/microsoft-public-windows-vista-general/26168-fix-mbr-vista.html) or change the BIOS settings to point to the correct drive.
4. Edit boot.ini correctly.

PS
If the drive you have imported is not going to be used to boot in the same way again then just grab a copy of BiNG (in my sig) because it will let you first identify and select the disk in question. Then from Partition Work choose the MBR button and then you can replace the code with standard code and change the active partition if so desired.

Does it really matter that the GRUB menu appears? If you replace it with standard MBR code and boot to it you will likely get "Missing Operating System" or "NTLDR is Missing" or similar message.

[awaj]

I chose to switch the primary boot hard drive to the right one. Part of my concern was that it was working fine until recently, and then randomly decided to go to grub, where it gave some error about not having any operating systems to boot into. (please note, I did panic for a short while as when it occurred it was late at night and it was my only working computer at the time...)

[Paul Komski]

Part of my concern was that it was working fine until recently, and then randomly decided to go to grub.If the PC is sometimes trying to boot from one drive rather than another one, without you having changed any BIOS settings or done any repartitioning etc, on a random basis then that implies that it is randomnly not recognising the regular chosen drive on occasions during start-up.

When that occurs it is probably trying the next hard drive in the priorities list (and possibly resetting the BIOS to that hard drive - just as it would do if you removed your regular drive from the system altogether).

I would double check that there are good and tight data and power connections to all your hard drives and if the problem persists consider that your PSU may be at fault or that one of your hard drives is beginning to fail and needs checking with its diagnostic from the maker's web-site.