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I have Windows XP installed in my system. For some work, I downloaded an ISO of the light version of Kali on a separate internal hard disk partition (G:) and installed Grub2 on the same drive to boot it from there (I had not yet booted Kali)

Now when I restart my computer, I get stuck at the Grub2 prompt and unable to do anything from here.

I would like to boot into my installed Windows and remove the Grub Bootloader. Any suggestions on how I can do that?

Edit: My disk drive is corrupted. Any methods relying on this won't be of much help.

Yuzuriha Inori
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2 Answers2

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  1. Insert your Windows XP USB or PXE and boot it
  2. Open the recovery console
  3. Type: fdisk /mbr
  4. Reboot

In recovery console, other options include: Type 'help' for the commands that the RC can run.

  • Try 'fixboot'. This re-writes the boot record.
  • Try 'fixmbr'; again, this may damage a partition table that it doesn't understand, so be wary of taking this step... you may want to use this as a last resort and only if you have a single partition on the disk.

src: https://www.wikihow.com/Use-Windows-Recovery-Console-from-XP-CD

Mark Shine
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  • Same question. Do I get to keep my data or does it format the system? – Yuzuriha Inori Apr 19 '18 at 10:27
  • Hello Yuzuriha Inori, No it will not delete your data. its repairing your grub master boot record which just is a tiny 1mb partition that says, go to your data on a different partition. – Mark Shine Apr 19 '18 at 10:28
  • Just one more thing. Can you please update the answer in favour of an USB boot rather than CD? I have a damaged CD drive, but can boot using a pd – Yuzuriha Inori Apr 19 '18 at 10:30
  • If you dont have a USB. you might need to PXE, the easiest solution is Cobbler. – Mark Shine Apr 19 '18 at 10:30
  • What are CD drives? USB is the only method I use if I dont have a PXE, (I have a home PXE ;) ) – Mark Shine Apr 19 '18 at 10:31
  • You wrote a CD in your answer :) – Yuzuriha Inori Apr 19 '18 at 10:31
  • PXE = install over network FYI and requires some advance and patients, might get something fast with docker. – Mark Shine Apr 19 '18 at 10:32
  • Nice screendump guide for more advanced troubleshooting FYI: https://www.wikihow.com/Use-Windows-Recovery-Console-from-XP-CD – Mark Shine Apr 19 '18 at 10:34
  • no problem, remember, if your messing around with multiboot and grubs, backup your data first, easier and less hassle. Always VirtualBox for free linux OS on your machine without messing with partitions and once you install the VB tools, it works very well. My personal choice is VMware, their tools run the smoothest. – Mark Shine Apr 19 '18 at 11:21
  • I actually made a restore point before this. But can't access that. – Yuzuriha Inori Apr 19 '18 at 11:47
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Boot from a Windows XP installation media and press R at the "Welcome" screen to get into Recovery Console. Then use the fixmbr command to overwrite Grub2 with the standard Windows MBR code.

telcoM
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  • Would that format my system? I mean, would it delete my data? :| – Yuzuriha Inori Apr 19 '18 at 07:29
  • No, it only rewrites the MBR boot code. The partition table will be unmodified, and so all your partitions will be safe. – telcoM Apr 19 '18 at 11:46
  • If you are concerned so much about your XP drive contents, you can use Linux live CD to run dd and store an image of the entire drive elsewhere. Then you can play and if something goes wrong, revert by re-imaging your drive from backup. But the methods already given to you are non destructive and you should be fine as long as Windows recovery works as expected. Read any prompt and confirmation carefully before you take actions! – ajeh Apr 19 '18 at 15:05