So I installed Fedora Core 4 dual boot with WinXP on my work laptop because I wanted to mess around. Now it's getting to the point where I don't have very much Windows disk space left. Basically what I would like to do is get all of the space back from Fedora Core 4 and give it back to Windows. It's not that I don't like Fedora Core 4, I actually have several different distros running at home, I just don't have the time/patience to mess with Fedora at work. Just FYI I don't have Partition Magic or Ghost or any of that stuff. I was thinking I could just go to fdisk (in Linux), delete the Linux partitions, create a new one and set it as type NTFS or FAT32 (I think my Win partition is NTFS right now). Will this work? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

The first thing I would do is to use your windows boot disk (or maybe from windows itself) to reset the master boot record by typing at a command line fixmbr. Then reboot and make sure the NTLoader is the boot manager instead of grub/lilo.

After that, I would pop in a Knoppix Live CD and use QTParted (which is a graphical partition magic clone) to delete the linux filesystems and create the Windows filesystems.

I'm pretty sure you could just use fdisk from linux on LiveCD, but I don't think you could do it from your fedora install (because the partitions are in use...).

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll try this stuff when I get a chance. Hopefully this won't hose my existing Windows partition. The IT people where I work would probably not be happy if they had to take 5 minutes out of their busy day to rejoin a newly rebuilt laptop to their domain. Anyway, thanks.

Soooooo...I ran fixmbr (BTW you need to run it from the recovery console) and it booted to Windows automacially, which is what I wanted. I then rebooted and ran qtparted off of Knoppix 4 and resized the windows partition and rebooted. When I rebooted I got an error saying that the windows bootloader was missing a file. I restored the file and rebooted and it did the sane thing. I rebooted into the recovery console again, ran fixmbr and rebooted. Now I get an error message saying "Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware. Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information." I've tried running chkdsk to repair the disk but that doesn't work either. I kinda need to get this to work because it's my work's laptop and I would rather not lose what's on it. Any suggestions?

Have you tried booting your windows install disk and selecting "repair install"?

I booted from the Windows CD and the closest option to that is to press 'R' and go to the recovery console. That's fine but what's next? I get a nice console but I have no idea what to do next.

Here's a link that might help some. I would try fixboot from the recovery console before trying anything else...

Uhhhh...link? I tried fixboot and got the same message. Should I do fixmbr after fixboot and then chkdsk or am I completely off base. It looks like all of the data on the drive is viable so I managed to copy the drive to a NAS drive on my network using Knoppix. I'm just not sure if that will work to restore the system. Let me know.

Thanks for all of your help.

As this is not a Linux problem, I have moved this to General.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314477

Sorry, been away for the weekend. Try this link. I would try methods 2,3,&4 in no particular order. I just noticed at the bottom it tells you what should be in boot.ini, so you can try method 1 also...

<dejectedly>Well...</dejectedly>

Using bootcfg I did manage to get the machine to boot up again. When I did, however, I noticed that some of my system devices wouldn't work because they couldn't get resources or something. Namely the PCI Express Root Port and the PM Express PCI Express Root Port. I also noticed that my display wasn't showing up (i.e. no display adaptors present). Everything seemed to work fine until I tried starting up a game. I tried un-installing and re-installing these drivers and disabling them and enabling them and rebooting every time. Unfortunately nothing worked. I uninstalled the ATI drivers rebooted and still nothing. Then I tried re-installing the ATI drivers and rebooted and it hung on a black screen. I rebooted again thinking I would go into Safe Mode and it still hung on Mup.sys or something like that. Anyway, long story short, I wiped it. Everything's gone but I was able to save the root directory tree onto some NAS and as a result saved what I needed.

Thanks again for all your help.

Phekno

P.S. I guess this thread got out of hand. Sorry it turned so Windows.

Sorry I couldn't be more help. And sorry if I caused some grief. I've never had a windows partition hosed by qtparted... Hmmm...

On a side note, I'd like job where I can play games on my work machine...

I'm sure they wouldn't be happy with me playing games on my work laptop. But then again I work at a place where we have a fully stocked beer fridge in the kitchenette! Plus, it's not like I'm playing games at work.