How to erase the MBR for Puppy USB install?

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Brian

How to erase the MBR for Puppy USB install?

#1 Post by Brian »

I am trying to install Puppy to a USB stick, but a previous distro I installed to it put a bootloader in the MBR. I've formatted the stick, but the bootloader survived and points to the old distro, preventing my computer fromw booting to puppy. How do I get rid of the MBR bootloader so my computer sees syslinux when booting?

ninjabob7

#2 Post by ninjabob7 »

If you install Puppy the recommended way, using the script on the live cd, it should automatically install the MBR. To erase it completely, use this command (where /dev/sda is your usb drive):
dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1
Or maybe /dev/null should be /dev/zero? You might want to wait for someone to confirm that before you try it, since dd can be very dangerous if you use it incorrectly.

GuestToo
Puppy Master
Posts: 4083
Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 18:11

#3 Post by GuestToo »

dd will also delete all the partitioning information in the mbr

in general, to "uninstall" a boot program in the mbr (or any boot sector), you would install a new boot program over the old one

Guest

#4 Post by Guest »

I have a similar problem.
First, I try to install puppy 1.0.7 HD Option 2 on my IDE CF disk (with grub install in MBR) but at boot it only shows 99 99 99 ... (notorious grub error) on the screen. Then I try to install using the install USB option. I format the CF with Win XP using FAT, then I do the install USB and when I boot up, I still get the 99 99 99 99 problem. Which mean the puppy install USB doesn't look like erasing the MBR.
Anybody has the same problem? Do we have to make the CF disk bootable before doing the puppy install USB? Since I only have Win XP and Linux, how can I make the cf disk bootable in FAT? I don't have DOS system that I can use to format the CF and my WinXP doesn't even have the fdisk command. The format option in WinXP doesn't have any option to make the CF disk bootable. I try FreeDos, but it doesn't recognize my usb. Any tools in Linux that can make the Fat-16 cf disk bootable?

Thanks

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Flash
Official Dog Handler
Posts: 13071
Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 16:04
Location: Arizona USA

#5 Post by Flash »

Here is a most excellent explanation of the boot process. It explains boot loaders and the MBR clearly and comprehensively.

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