When I set up my new PC, I wanted to again do a dual boot Windows/Linux setup–and I did, putting Linux Mint on my external 2TB Samsung SSD.
I later decided that having dual boot with an external SSD was not the way to go, so yesterday I undid this, with the intent of going back to Windows-only temporarily, before getting an internal drive setup for a Linux distro (likely Mint again).
I knew in undoing the dual boot that I had to be careful to not mess up things like Windows’ MBR–Master Boot Record, which could prevent the system from booting up at all.
I messed up the MBR.
Ironically, my still functioning old PC (also a dual boot system) allowed me to make a bootable USB drive for Windows and after a number of false starts, the MBR was repaired and everything is working normally again on the new PC, minus Linux Mint (for now)
I have some quaint old-fashioned paper notes on what to do should this happen again.
And now that I’ve cleaned up the mess I made, I can get back to what I was doing before I rudely interrupted myself.
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