micmath blog

Last year I partitioned the hard drive on my PC laptop so I could install Kubuntu and have it dual boot. It worked quite well except for the fact that there was an extra step for everyone in the family (none of whom have any interest in Linux) every time they turned on the computer: they had to choose the WindowsXP option from the menu presented by the GRUB loader. The fact is I almost always prefer to use my Mac OSX anyway so, from their point of view, I had made their all lives a teensy bit harder for no good reason.

Then they ran out of room. The 30 GB I had left them for their Windows partition was quickly filled to the brim with iTunes music and family photos. I've been using Sun's VirtualBox application at work and was so impressed I decided I would delete that mostly unused Linux partition and install Kubuntu on a virtual hard drive instead. I'd free up a lot of disk space and make logging in easier for everyone in the bargain; you'd expect me to be a family hero, right? The family looked dubious.

Frankly no one seemed even a little surprised when I announced a short while later that I had--once again--rendered the PC completely unusable. "Uh, we do have backups of those photos from Molly's birthday party right?" "Um, I think so... do we?"

The problem was I'd deleted the Linux partition but didn't tell the GRUB about it. This made it impossible to boot the computer. Not a time to panic: the truth is I'd been in this sort of situation more times than I'd care to admit, and there is always a way out, if you just google it hard enough.

Answer: Super Grub Disk. I downloaded the iso file from the website onto my Mac, burned that to a CD using the built-in Mac Disk Utility tool, popped that CD into my PC and restarted. I was presented with a list of options, one of which was to rebuild the WindowsXP master boot record (MBR). No, I don't know what a MBR is, how do you think I got myself in this situation in the first place, all I know is Windows is rather unhappy without one. Anyway, now that the MBR was, um, mastered again, the old laptop booted right up! Even after all that I'm still not the family hero though. Weird.