dual boot with xp prob: ntldr is missing

[evolmachine]

there is nothing important on the drive. the thing that gets me is that i booted into windows and was browsing the web just fine on it, and it needed to restart to "update". When I restarted, this whole thing happened. It was working just fine one minute, then the next its not. Since I never use the drive, I have a hard time believing its failing. I think it may have been a bad update or something...

again i don't care to save any files from it. It's literally a windows install and pretty much nothing else. I just want my drive back! Right now its a friggin paperweight!

I read something about ntfsfix? i know its not checkdisk but maybe that might help get the drive back? Right now it seems like linux doesnt want to even touch it, and I'm afraid to just format it through gparted because wilee-nilee said grub is installed on that drive... which is weird.

============================= Boot Info Summary: ==============================

 => Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in 
    partition #5 for /boot/burg.
 => No boot loader is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb
 => Windows is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdc

What concerns me is the first line. How can Grub 2 be installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in partition #5 for /boot/burg if there is no partition 5 on sda? not to mention if sda is corrupted or failing, how the hell is grub even loading? forgive me if this is basic i'm still learning here, but logically to me this makes no sense.

[oldfred]

There is a bug in either grub2 or the script that mis-identifies the drive. You will want to reinstall grub2 to sdb and set BIOS to boot sdb before doing anything to the sda drive. Boot into your system and run this:

reinstall from working (not liveCD) system - first find Ubuntu drive:
sudo fdisk -l
if it's "/dev/sdb" then just run:
sudo grub-install /dev/sdb
If that returns any errors run:
sudo grub-install --recheck /dev/sdb
Then:
sudo update-grub
to get grub to remember where to reinstall on updates:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc
spacebar to choose drive, enter to accept, do not choose partitions

If you remove sda for any reason rerun the dpkg command to make sure grub installs to the correct drive on updates.

[evolmachine]

Thanks for all the help. Reinstalled burg on sdb and unmounted and formatted sda through gparted. sda is now my /home partition. goodbye winblowz!