Need a little help

[jl123]

Ok here's the thing I had linux on this older computer(PII 266) and it made the many partitions it naturally does of course. Now I'm trying to put win98 on it cause I'm gonna give it away. Well I can't seem to erase the extended dos partition. I accidently deleted the primary first and it went ahead and let me. Anyways is there any ways to completly whipe out the partition table and start fresh? There has to be if not then i'm stuck with 57% of a 4 gig drive

~Joel

[EvilRick]

You can use your Linux CD to boot, then use the fdisk that comes on it. You should then be able to delete all the partitions. Be sure to write to the disk when you're done.

I assume you want to keep whatever is already accessible? Then Partition Magic is your answer, if you can get hold of a copy. DOS can't see linux partitions. You could use a linux boot floppy and use linux fdisk (cfdisk) to repartion the whole drive again, but you would lose all data. Partition Magic will not only allow you to see the linix partitions, but also change them to FAT32 or NTFS or even let you resize the existing partitions to a single partiotion, all without losing data.

There may be some other versions of fdisk-type programs that will do this as well. if there are, I haven't seen them. Partition Magic works for me!

If you only want to delete altogether, you could try to use a manufacturers floppy based disk tool (like Maxtor's Maxblast ) which should include a low level format tool. This might work as well.

Hope you get it done.

[jl123]

I'm still kinda confused.I don't see any fdisk type program on the linux boot disk or cd. The computer is a IBM Personal Computer 300GL 6561-30U. I have til tomorrow to figure this out because my grandma is going to south texas and she's gonna take it to the kid.

~Joel

[Xaotic]

Get a Win98 boot disk from www.bootdisk.com and boot up. Next, fdisk /mbr, to clear the master boot record. It probably has LILO loaded on it and is preventing W9x from loading. Finally, use fdisk to remove all partitions by option 3 then 4 to remove non DOS partitions till the drive has no partitions. At that point, you should be able to partition the entire drive and load W9x.

[newbie~wan]

I think I know exactly what your problem is. Were all of your linux partitions inside the extended partition? Dos fdisk allowed me to delete the logical partitions inside the extended partition, but then would not allow me to delete the extended, claiming that I still had logicals residing inside - which I didn't - I had just deleted them all. This is a flaw in DOS fdisk. Of course, all of my extended partition resided above the 1024th cylinder of the HDD....I don't know if that had anything to do with it or not....

Anyway, boot up w/ your linux install CD just like you would to reinstall linux - chosing the most manual/expert mode possible. When you get to the part where you partition and format, delete the partitions, but then exit out of the install. I have used the mandrake 8.1 and redhat 7.1 CDs to do this. Your milage may vary. Post back if it doesnt work, or if you have any other info that you think would help us.

good luck.

[jl123]

Newbie: That's my exact problem I'm sorry I didn't explain it better. I'll give that a try.

~Joel

[ctek55]

I had this same problem a little while ago and thinking back, I think I chose not to enable large disk support and then was able to delete all of the partitions after that. Not sure if this helps....

[jl123]

Just to let everyone know that if you ever have this problem to pop in that Linux cd and choose expert setup and when it gets to partitioning the drive just go "clear all" and done. Make sure it writes the new partition table on the disk.

Everything turned out alright thanks all

~Joel

Thanks for letting us know jl123.