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I just installed Arch Linux and it's not working well, and now I can't access Windows because of GRUB. How can I uninstall GRUB through the Arch Linux shell?

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2 Answers

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You cannot 'uninstall' grub. You can overwrite it by Windows bootloader. I'm afraid that most people who know how to reinstall Windows bootloader without reinstalling Windows are on superuser (I guess for most people here Windows is the second system) - you have to do it from Windows install disk or similar tools.

You should be able to chainload the Windows bootloader from grub by following code BTW:

title Windows
    rootnoverify (hd0,0)
    chainloader +1

or entering commandline in GRUB

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

PS. What is not working well? It is part we can help with. Have you tried simpler distributions like for example Ubuntu?

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Some Linux installers save the original boot sector, so they can restore it. That does assume you can at least boot your new system. – Gilles Jan 10 '11 at 19:27
@Gilles: I don't think non-user-friendly installers (read Arch, Debian etc) do that. Anyway there is mention of Arch Linux shell and recent questions about Arch so bootability of Arch seems to be reasonable assumption. – Maciej Piechotka Jan 10 '11 at 19:38
@Maciej: I can't even find one on Ubuntu. Though maybe it's because it's not a dual boot. – Gilles Jan 10 '11 at 21:03
@Gilles: I cannot recall stating that Ubuntu do save. I stated that I guess that Arch's and Debian's don't. – Maciej Piechotka Jan 10 '11 at 21:12
@Maciej: I don't recall you stating that either. I thought I'd seen a distribution do it, and given my habits and environment it would probably be Debian or Ubuntu. Maybe I made this up from whole cloth. – Gilles Jan 10 '11 at 21:18
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I had to get rid of the dual boot in my work computer (needed space for work stuff) and I used the MBRFix utility which you can download here:

http://www.sysint.no/products/Download/tabid/536/language/en-US/Default.aspx

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