Copy WindowsXP without GNU Grub?

I'm wondering if copying my OS hard drive with Windows XP would also copy the GNU Grub partition on it? I've done a fixmbr and that didn't remove it, still keeps booting into stupid GNU Grub command line instead of windows. This hard drive previously had Linux on it, I formatted it, then copied over my windowsxp install from another drive. Shows like this on HD Tune:



I'm guessing the 'unknown' partition is the GNU Grub part. If I copy this drive's contents into another new formatted HD, is it going to take GNU grub with it? Or should I just remove GNU Grub now? I read some suggestions but they didn't work, like /fixmbr and windows repair install; still getting the GNU Grub command line on bootup. Not sure if it's safe to remove that 'unknown' partition, or if there is another way to uninstall this.

boot to a windows cd, go into recovery console and run
FIXMBR
it should get rid of the GRUB loader

just deleted the 243mb partition and going to try fixmbr from recovery console after I finish something. Probably 5-6 more hours. Using Eraser with DoD method to wipe a used hard drive that has a bunch of viruses (anti-virus software and formatting doesn't remove them).

Run both fixboot and fixmbr. I was going to include an explanation, but after reading it, I think I'd probably be giving wrong information.

ah yes, i left out the fixboot... thanks

Just did both fixboot and fixmbr, gave me a warning 'this disk contains unusual boot data, overwriting might make the whole partition unusable' or something like that, I went ahead anyway. Now instead of GNU grub it just won't boot anymore with a message 'invalid boot, insert system disk' or something. Still boots from the old drive that had windowsxp on it originally.. even though I've deleted the 'windows' folder long time ago. It still has the boot.ini, bootsect.dos and boot.bkk files on that old drive, but none of them are on my current winxp drive where the OS is installed.

Should I just copy those 3 files "boot.ini, bootsect.dos and boot.bkk" from the old drive to my OS drive? For some reason the fixboot and fixmbr doesn't seem to recreate them in my current OS drive, even if I unplug all other hard drives to ensure it's not doing it somewhere else. Tried both of those commands 2 or 3 times now.

update: also that 'unknown' partition in the first 243mb of the hard drive I deleted is just showing as 'unallocated' space now... possibly it's trying to put my boot sector there? I read about merging it but people are saying even if I use 3rd party software to merge an unallocated partition, it has potential to cause data loss and I'd have to reintall windows.

Tried copying those 3 boot files but that didn't fix anything. Just formatted that unallocated partition into NTFS, going to try fixboot and fixmbr from recovery console again to see if that might have changed anything.

I've used Partition Commander / System Commander to resize XP partitions before and never had problems (it isn't free, though). I've only managed to do something to a system so fixboot/fixmbr won't fix it once, and I don't remember how I fixed it Why are you trying to get rid of Linux / GRUB? You could always install just enough of a distro on that 243MB partition to reinstall a working GRUB...

oh I got that hard drive a long time ago and formatted it, but didn't realise there's a small partition on it and Grub. Just too lazy to mess with command lines.

Tried the fixboot and fixmdr after the partition was formatted to ntfs, but now it says 'ntldr not found' which means I'd need to repair install. I'm going to just merge that partition with my main before doing the repair install, when I find software that works properly. Will try Partition Commander I think.

i think you need to make the second partition active and then fixmbr and fix boot will fix it, i think active is the command and then you would pick partition 2, or something like that, sorry can't remember.

edit: actually i believe the command is 'diskpart' and from there on
select disk 0
select partition 2
active

that should make your second partition active

ok I'll try that... noticed that my OS drive isn't even set to active or primary, just 'logical', when I was fixing the partitions. It won't let me set it to active so I guess it needs to be set to primary first, then it should highlight the option for active. Guess I really noobed it up back when I first copied windows over.

Thanks for all the help, think I'm close to fixing this mess now. I'll hope for my usually-terrible luck to not strike.