Comment 2 for bug 178641

Far be it from me to defend Dell. It does seem to me, however, that there might be room for offering people more assistance / options in deciding what to do with the MBR.

Some thoughts:

When I tell Ubuntu to reformat and install over the entire HD, I would expect it to overwrite the MBR.

With or without that idea, how about a query of the user like:

"Your hard drive already contains a non-zero Master Boot Record. You can either keep it or have Ubuntu replace it. If you are only planning to run Ubuntu, we recommend replacing it. If you are setting up your system to boot multiple operating systems and you need to preserve the existing MBR, then keep it."

This would not involve any special 'footsie' with the insane Dell code, and might also avoid other mysterious issues for other people some day.