Re: Uninstallation help

[David Talkington <dtalk prairienet org>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

bosKo wrote:

>dad decided he wanted the computer back so I tried uninstalling linux,
>but it stuffed up somehow and now the computer boots asking for a
>disk.. but god knows what disk. 

If the problem is just that LILO still installed, boot into MICROS~1
DOS, do:

fdisk /mbr

That may be all it needs.  

If you've got Linux partitions that you now can't get rid of with
Windows 95/98, thank Microsoft for their crippled fdisk that only
understands Microsoft partitions.  Literally every disk utility I can
think of _except_ Microsoft fdisk is able to delete Linux partitions.
Here are some ideas:

- - Get your hands on a boot disk for Caldera DR-DOS, which can handle
this.

- - Start the install routine for any NT-class Microsoft OS (NT, 2000,
XP).  Those installers have disk utilities that are capable of erasing
Linux partitions.

- - Re-run the Red Hat installer, and manually set up the partitions such
that there's only one primary partition and no swap -- if it'll let you
do that.  Go far enough that it saves the disk info, and then abort the
install.

- - Pull out that hard disk and install it on some other machine that's 
running Linux, and use Linux fdisk, sfdisk, cfdisk, etc. to clean all 
the partitions off it.

- - Joebewan's DEBUG routine, if you're feeling brave.

Good luck ...

- -d

- -- 
David Talkington

PGP key: http://www.prairienet.org/~dtalk/0xCA4C11AD.pgp



-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 6.5.8
Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.75-6

iQA/AwUBPR+bD79BpdPKTBGtEQLjUwCeOapXnjPkP8BH4un6VVfcIP5Vhu8An1sf
YiVag/BS6rQJCZfBeMTWHSow
=6GXZ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----