Delete MBR File From BCD

Hello All. This is my first post here. I am worse than a newbie; I'm a PC dinosaur! Not joking either.
Recently got a Dell Inspiron 3048 with Windows 8.1 pre installed. As I am a die hard XP user (my other PC is a Dell Dimension 2400), and seeing that PC's days may be numbered, I want to start using Linux, and decided Mint 17.1 would be first on the list.
Ordered a Linux Mint 17.1 boot disk and went to install it. At the option for a dual boot with Windows, I got lost, and did not understand the "other" choice versus making Linux the only OS on the PC. I wound up wiping my HDD and lost contact with Windows 8.1. Fortunately, the Dell Tech I got at Dell Support was able to walk me through getting Windows back up, but the only way I can now access Mint 17.1 is with the boot disk, but there is no set up options as it is already set up, even though incorrectly for a dual boot.
How do I wipe out Linux without losing Windows 8.1 as well so I can re install Linux and this time make the correct selection for a dual boot?
Anyone willing to respond please do so small and slow so I can follow.
TIA.
BTW, I have tried installing Zorin OS 9 Ultimate on my XP machine via DVD and USB, but I can't get past the f1/f2 loop, even though I have reconfigured my boot sequence according to the drive I'm installing from. Zorin support has been MIA on this. Anyone having a similar problem?
Cheers

Hi,

Before installing Linux Mint 17 to the entire HDD of my HP p2 1317cb desktop, it was running a preinstalled windows 8 OEM UEFI. After several failed attempts of dual booting(no grub menu and boots directly to the windows 8) i then decided to do a erase all and install Linux option. Now i have Linux Mint 17.1 working flawlessly, so far. What i want to now do is, dual boot a windows 7 installation alongside my Linux. Please advise on the best way to do this.
Thank You.

Note: Before doing a clean install of Linux i disabled secure boot,enabled legacy, and disabled fast boot.

Hi guys,

I'm new to this forum and linux too.
I thought of installing a lightweight distro of linux and did some research on the net where I found people recommending Puppy Linux. Plus it is (theoretically speaking) possible to run it from a USB (flash) drive which I decided to try out but it seems like it's not that simple a task as a lot of people (all over the internet) say it is.

What I tried so far is this: installing it into a thumb drive using unetbootin follwing a youtube tutorial (which basically showed how to download an iso of puppy, use unetbootin to make the thumbdrive bootable and install puppy on it). It didn't work. The USB wasn't recognized as a bootable device. I know for sure it can be booted from it since I tried ubuntu from the same USB and the same Laptop (which is able to boot from USB).

I thought that something with the Flash Drive not OK so I tried to use a windows installer to install puppy like other windows programms but this didn't work either. This time Puppy was recognized because there was an option to boot either Puppy or Windows 7 but when I chose to boot from Puppy nothing happens just a screen flash, some letters in the top left corner saying something like NTSC or NTSF (I can't read it properly because it goes away too fast) then after the screen flash the whole thing again (boot from win 7 or Puppy I choose Puppy again the flash... basically a loop).

Any ideas what I'm doing wron or what the problem is?

Thank You for any replies.

Right now I have Linux Mint and Windows 7 set up as a dual boot. I'd like to replace the Windows partition with ChaletOS. I never use Windows and have no reason to keep it. Also I don't want to back up any files on the Windows.

How do I go about this (safely)?

I have a Toshiba Laptop that had a Dual Boot of Windows 7 and Linux Mint 17 on it and both OS's worked fine. I've been wanting to use CentOS 7 as my primary OS so that I can become more familar with RPM management and proceeded to remove my Mint installation and replace it with the CENTOS 7 installation, and the install completed successfully. HOWEVER, here's my problem.....

When my laptop starts up, I don't see GRUB nor do I have any option of selecting whether to run Windows or CentOS. It automatically loads up Centos 7. When I do a 'sudo fdisk -l', I can see that SDA1 is an NTFS drive, and when I try the following 'sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/Main\ Drive' I get an error message saying that I can't mount an NTFS drive.

Am I missing something or is there a way to access my Windows files from within Centos. I was able to do this with Mint without an issue, but unable to see any of my windows drives because I can't mount an NTFS drive.

I have no problem with keeping CENTOS as my only OS on this laptop, however, I do need to access the files from the Window's partition, and if anyone can help me to access my files, that would be totally awesome.

Thank you in advance for reading through this and for any help offered.....

Mikey

Hi all:

Yes, my first post and I am sure to make mistakes. Here goes.

Regarding suggestions for Linux Screencasts forum. I constantly struggle with dual boot with Windows. I read so many blogs that my eyes cross. Its even more confusing now with UEFI partitions. It happened today and now Windows is not booting. Screencasts sound like a windfall.

What I need to know:

1. Exactly where are the dual boot files located?
2. Where are examples of working dual boot files?
3. What tools do I need to access dual boot files when my system is not working?
4. If I use Windows tools to fix Windows boot then Fedora boot is overwritten. What do I need to watch?
5. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.

There are my suggestions for today. Hope it generates food for thought. :-)

Hi, yesterday I decided to install Deepin in a dual boot. I later decided I no longer needed/wanted it so I deleted the partition. Apparently I had grub on that partition as well, and now my laptop only goes to grub rescue and will not boot.
I have an acer aspire v5 touch. Removing the hard drive is not an option. I have tried to access UEFI but my computer just beeps and goes to grub rescue. I have grub rescue disk on a flash drive, I used unetbootin to do that, but iI cannot get to any boot menu (f12), and when I use ls (hd0)/ I get a unknown file system error. Please help, and sorry for my grammar/formatting, I'm on mobile.
Tl;dr: Deleted partition containing grub and deepin, now can only get to grub rescue, and I keep getting an unknown file system error, please help.

Hello!

TL;DR: Deleted Linux partition from Windows. Stuck at Grub rescue prompt.

I'm sorry to trouble you guys, because I'm an idiot.

So I'm wanting to dual-boot Kalilinux and Windows 8.
I went through the steps such as creating a bootable USB, changing the
boot order and so on. I get into Kali, start Gparted and try to partition stuff.

I'm far from an expert, so I wasn't sure what to do. Long-story short, I
didn't seem to get Kali installed correctly, due to something with an EFI
drive being required. So I boot into windows and then stupidly, because it said in the guide,try to "uninstall" Kali by removing it's partition, inside Win8 haha... So I did.

Now I simply get the Grub rescue command prompt when I boot from the same
USB and I have no idea how to fix it. I've run bootrec.exe/fixmbr in Windows haha,
for what it's worth. However Grub can't find any partition it says.

In windows, I have like... 2-3 Recovery partitions. Does anyone know how to remove
them??? I've tried to clear as much as I can, besides the C drive and Auxillary D drive.

Any advice would be very appreciated.

Hi All,

I recently decided to tryout Linux and dual booted my laptop (originally just had windows 8) with Xubuntu. Now I want to try out Kali Linux. So I downloaded Kali and made a bootable USB, the problem is that when I try to boot from the USB it just brings up the grub menu asking me to select Xubuntu, Windows etc. I've changed the boot menu in the BIOS but that has no effect.

I've tried booting into windows and the restarting by holding shift but when I select the usb option it just says:

"system doesn't have any USB boot option. Please select other boot option in Boot Manager Menu"

and then returns to the grub menu. I don't understand because I used a bootable usb to install xubunto?

I'd be really grateful if anyone can help me out with this!

Thanks

I have a dual boot installation of Mint 17 Cinnamon (separate / & /home & swap partitions) along with WINXP (c: winxp, D: data on NTFS).

I am not happy with the cinnamon and want to install XFCE 17 (fresh download from mint website).

I have created 3-4 different usb sticks wwith the iso (thru unetbootin, YUMI, unisersal boot installer) and tried to install. The installation freezes on the second screen itself - after asking for the language, it just sits there and waits for something to happen. Tried this 3-4 times but it just keeps the wheel spinning. However, while I am trying this I am unable to use the laptop perfectly well. In fact, I am typing this while the the installation is trying to do something!

I will be very grateful for the help. I am not too well uquipped with the Linux command system and still rate myself as a newbie.