After deleting Linux, how to retrieve the Windows boot menu

With the impact of Linux more widely, many computer enthusiasts have begun to install on their love machine Linux. Therefore, in addition to the original Windows system, the hard disk also adds a Linux. The first operating system selection menu seen at boot time becomes Linux LILO or GRUB.

After a while, some people decided to remove Linux because they were not used to Linux
, or the hard disk space was tight. Although the process of removing Linux went smoothly, LILO stayed. So, how can I remove LILO and restore the Windows boot interface?

LILO (or GRUB) is the Linux boot manager. Most current Linux distributions currently load LILO into the master boot record (MBR) of the primary hard disk. This is why the first screen of the machine boot becomes Linux LILO after installing Linux. When installing Linux, we can ask the installer to install the Linux boot manager to another hard drive or boot floppy to prevent the Linux launcher from overwriting the MBR. However, for users who install Linux for the first time, or users who use the automatic installation mode, it is very likely that the Linux boot manager will not rewrite the MBR. After the MBR is rewritten, the boot module of the Windows
itself has not been lost, but it is now required to access it through the Linux boot manager LILO or GRUB.

So, how can I clear LILO or GRUB and return to the startup interface of Windows itself? For a system with only one Windows, it is very simple: make a boot floppy disk containing FDISK program, start the machine with floppy disk, and then command The line executes FDISK /MBR. This command resets the MBR so that the system starts Windows directly. However, if the system has multiple Windows before installing Linux, running the FDISK /MBR command in this way will override the Windows multi-boot menu so that the machine can only boot from the default primary operating system.

To clear LILO or GRUB back to the previous Windows boot interface, the quickest and most reliable way is to use the Windows Recovery Console. The Recovery Console can be accessed from the Windows CD or to the system. If you want to run the Recovery Console from the CD, assuming that the main operating system of the machine is Windows XP, start the machine with the WinXP CD first. When prompted, select Manual Recovery (press R).

Installing the Recovery Console directly on the system speeds up processing.

First, open the command line window of Win XP (select menu "Start" → "Run", execute cmd); then, insert WinXP CD in CD-ROM, run D:\\i386 on the command line \\winnt32.exe /cmdcons command, where D: is the letter of the CD-ROM drive. After the installation is complete, you can select the Recovery Console from the Windows startup screen the next time you start.

If more than one Win XP system is installed on the machine, the Recovery Console will prompt which Win XP to fix. At this point, you should select the last installed system and then enter the administrator's password to log in to WinXP. On the command line, type fixmbr and press Enter. The system prompts that there is already an illegal startup record, so don't bother, just confirm to continue. Restart, the Windows boot menu is back.