Our firstQ & A of the week comes from Gen via the reader feedback page . Remember to try our friendly forums for answers too.

Q: I've been experimenting with loading Linux onto a spare drive on my computer, and came to the conclusion that I prefer Windows XP when all is said and done. The only trouble is, I can't get back into Windows anymore... I booted into Windows and erased the Linux partitions I had made on my extra drive, and that was fine, but the next time I rebooted I was greeted with a command prompt for 'grub' and nothing else. I'm sure I formatted the right drive. Help!

A: Grub (GRand Unified Bootloader) is the bootloader used by many versions of Linux. It's resident in the Master Boot Record (MBR) of your first hard drive and gives you that nice splash screen where you can choose which OS you want to load. Trouble is that removing Linux by formatting your Linux partitions in Windows will not get rid of GRUB because it doesn't live in your Linux partitions. This procedure does break the bootloader though, as you have found out.

The solution is to boot your PC with the Windows XP CD, then press 'R' to 'repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console...' The command prompt-based recovery console will load and you will be prompted to identify which XP installation you want to repair and asked for your Administrator password. Once you have the recovery console prompt, type:

fixmbr