Help with Red Hat

andra reen

I installed Red Hat on my computer, it messed up. I want to be able to put windows 98 back on. I fdisked it, formated it and nothing works.Can anybody help me?

janmike

Try using FDISK with /MBR switch. That will rewrite the MBR. I believe that's where your problem lies. That should finish getting all the Linux off of it. We had this same problem in a class that I took at a local state college and that was the fix.

Hope this works for you.

andra reen

Tryed that
When I tryed to install 98, its saying I have less harddrive space then I have. I think NTFS still there, even though I can't see it when I fdisked it. Someone suggested I do a low level format, but I still can't get full access to the harddrive.

janmike

I have the following from an e-mail. Sorry I don't have more experience myself.

If you need to remove Linux from a hard drive, and have attempted to do this with the default DOS fdisk, you will experience the "Partitions exist but they don't exist" problem. The best way to remove non-DOS partitions is with a tool that understands partitions other than DOS.

You can perform this with the installation floppy by typing "linux expert" (without the quotes) at the boot: prompt.

boot:linux expert



Select install (versus upgrade) and when it comes to partitioning the drive, choose fdisk. In fdisk type p to print out the partition numbers, and remove the Linux partitions with the d command. When you're satisfied with the changes you have made, you can quit with a w and the changes will be saved to disk. If you deleted too much, type q and no changes will occur.

Once you have removed the Linux partitions, you can reboot your computer by pressing Control--Alt--Delete instead of continuing with the install.

Good luck.

tigger

.Quote" I think NTFS still there, even though I can't see it when I fdisked it."

If you have an NTFS partition on that drive, 9x won't see it. If you have a partition formatted 32/16 you can install 98, however, you won't be able to see ANYTHING that is NTFS. Low level format and start from scratch.

I think that is right anyway

Drakonblayde

Either get hold of a copy of partition magic, or find someone who has a copy and just clear the drive that way.

Remember to set a primary partition as the active partition once you create it, it isn't always done by default

seth223uk

id stick the drive in as a slave in a mates pc use partition magic 8 to wipe and recreate the primary partition required then take it out and go from there, works as the partition magic sees all format types to my knowledge and its very reliable

Ghent

Just use the Debug script from a standard windows boot disk. It'll completely wipe the drive with a low level format. If that don't fix it, nothing will.

RussS

Great post ghent - nice to see someone understanding some of the tools on the MS disks. Yes andra reen that should work.

andra reen

Thanks! I used partition magic and its back to normal

Ghent

Thanx RussS. For anyone else interested in learning about the beauty of Debug, check out http://www.firmware.com/support/bios/hdclear.htm Just be careful when you use it. I've heard from a few people that if you have more then 1 hard drive attached to your machine, that debug could possible decide to wipe all of them.