Removing Grub from HDD

[HLA91]

Hey everyone

Right, the background to this first shall we. I have 2 HDD's in my PC a 80GB and a 250GB. Last November my 250 was my main with XP on it and it started playing up.

I am unable to perform a full re-install of windows xp due to the fact that my CPU temp rises to around 75-80 C, I installed Ubuntu on the 250 as a stop gap as I had lots of coursework due in.
Anyway I found a backup image of my computer that I had made so I decided to restore that image to the 250 but after it was restored, every time I would boot it just showed me "invalid file system" and then displayed the "grub rescue>" prompt. I finally decided to restore the image to my 80 and this was fine and I disconnected my 250 and used my 80 up until today.

The past couple of days my 80 has been displaying some warning signs like lots of delayed "write fails" and acting a bit slow.
Bear in mind this HDD is approx 8 years old (it was my brothers) it was to be expected. So I decided to finally try and tackle the grub problem on my 250. I have tried everything from using the windows recovery console fixboot / fixmbr
bootcfg /rebuild and nothing will get rid of the grub that is lingering.

I searched around and tried the dd command found here How to uninstall GRUB but still grub rescue still appears.

Can anyone help me here please I have no idea what to do next.

Many thanks

HLA91

 

[Dngrsone]

Have you tried repartitioning the drive?

 

[HLA91]

I never thought of partitioning the drive, but anyway its all sorted now. I found a post in a forum (for the life of me I cant find it again) and they said about installing lilo boot-loader so I did, rebooted and instead of giving me the grub rescue> prompt it said ntldr missing so I replaced that and it all works fine now. I just wish I knew why the XP installation process causes my CPU to cook itself, anyone know?Is it common with XP?

Many thanks

HLA91

 

[atomichybrid]

HLA91,

Is your CPU heatsink clean? Perhaps the computer has accumulated dust and thus generating alot of heat to the machine. Its also possible if theres bad air flow in the system itself. In my opinion i dont think the installation process would skyrocket your cpu temperature.

 

[sahabcse]

what is the output of "bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd"

 

[HLA91]

I can install Linux distros with no temp problem. What I am trying to do is borrow a friends Windows 7 install disk and install that onto my spare hdd just to see if maybe there is something buggy about the xp install. I will post the output of that command when I get back from lectures.

Cheers everyone

HLA91

 

[maverick0923]

Clean out the heatsink, make sure the fan for the CPU is running smoothly and not limping. Apply new thermal paste, and make sure any case fans that have failed are replaced.

 

[figage]

Clean out the heatsink, make sure the fan for the CPU is running smoothly and not limping. Apply new thermal paste, and make sure any case fans that have failed are replaced.

What is this reply stand for?

 

[maverick0923]

He mentioned that when he installed Windows XP that he started having thermal issues. This is an idea of what you can do to resolve thermal issues. Hopefully the CPU hasn't been damaged yet.