Flexnet Sector 32

More notes to self.

Was just trying to reinstall grub on a disk on which I had accidentally trashed the partition table (It's the WRONG DISK Grommet !)

I noticed the following error when I ran grub-install :

/usr/sbin/grub-setup: warn: Sector 32 is already in use by FlexNet; avoiding it.  This software may cause boot or other problems in future.  Please ask its authors not to store data in the boot track..

I thought I would see what gives. Seems that this is related to Adobe DRM stuff. What I want to know is why this sort of thing is left lying around long after Windows/Adobe has gone. Despite formatting and partitioning, someone else's crap is still on MY disk. Unacceptable.

There are two ways to get shot.

1. A low level format / disk wipe - but I couldn't believe there wasn't another way.

2. Zero out the MBR and reinstall grub. Much better and as follows :


http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1661254

BACKUP FIRST :
sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=~/first_63_sectors bs=512 count=63


To zero all sectors do this (take a backup first !) :
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=62 seek=1

Or just the sector 32 :
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 seek=32

Seems that there are several other programs that perform similar tricks.

To chroot and reinstall grub

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/sda1

sudo mount --bind /dev /media/sda1/dev
sudo mount --bind /proc /media/sda1/proc
sudo mount --bind /sys /media/sda1/sys
sudo chroot /media/sda1

sudo update-grub

Job done. Roll a smoke and get a coffee.