Had a very strange experience with my dual-boot machine.

On this one, I stopped using Ubuntu a while ago, but left everything in place.
It had too many problems running Linux.

1. Decided to re-claim hdd space by deleting the Ubuntu partitions from within
Winxp without doing a clone which was overdue by a couple months. Big
mistake.

2. Restarting, showed Grub to have an error and wouldn't boot.

3. Tried using SuperGrub and SystemRescuecd and nothing worked.

4. Pulled out my clone on a brand new drive from Feb(?), exact same brand and
size.

5. Swapping out as usual didn't work this time. When I could get the drive to
show in Bios, it'd come up with a SMART error which seemed strange for a brand
new drive, only cloned once. Most of the time it just wouldn't show. My
thought: bad cable.

6. Putting the bad clone on the cable by itself on the CD tab (no CD drive)
would give a quick error message about 'partition' right after Grub menu
selection, and then Winxp would appear to load, except no icons, just your mouse
and wallpaper.

7. Re-swapped back in the original Grub-problem drive and it now works fine,
completely bypassing Grub, no worries except knowing my clone was useless.

I thought Grub stayed in the MBR regardless?