Uninstall Ubuntu from a XP/Ubuntu dual-boot without XP-cd

Question

I have a laptop with XP SP2 and Ubuntu dualboot. I want to remove Ubuntu from the dualboot. This is pretty trivial (remove the Ubuntu partitions), the problem is fixing the MBR. Currently the laptop's MBR is set to boot the GRUB bootloader and I would like to restore the XP bootloader. Various solutions exist on the internet using EasyBCD or the WinXP CD, the problem is that I can't use EasyBCD (it works only for Vista or 7) nor the WinXP CD (I don't have access to one ATM).

Is there an other solution?

Answer 1

Download and extract ms-sys from SourceForge. Then run it:

sudo /path/to/ms-sys --mbr /dev/hdX

Replace hdX with the drive where your Windows partition is. If your Windows partition is hda2, for example, use --mbr /dev/hda. You can wipe out your Ubuntu partition by formatting it using Windows XP's Disk Management snap-in (diskmgmt.msc) or any other disk partitioning tool you trust.

Read the documentation on the linked SourceForge page to learn how to use ms-sys correctly.