Uninstalling SuSE 8.0 nightmare
 

Hi all,

Tried to uninstall SuSE 8.0 tonight and had real trouble doing it!
System: dual boot SuSE and WinXP, lilo in mbr.

Followed uninstall instructions from the manual: inserted SuSE cd, did a mock re-install, deleted Linux partitions, aborted, rebooted, fdisk /mbr, blue screen of death from windows, error. Tried repairing it with win install cd, same blue screen.
Had to re-format the whole thing and re-install windows.

Any sure-fire way to uninstall SuSE and keep WinXP functional?

Thanks!

You're probably screwed and have to reinstall Winblows. When does the error come up? I had the same problem w/ SUSE and will never use SUSE again.

Is SuSE and Winblows on two different drives or both on one hard drive? If they're both on one hard drive, you're pretty much screwed. If they are on different drives, do I low-level format of SuSE drive, get a Winblows boot disk, and fdisk /mbr. Should be ok.

Both on one hard drive. So there's no way out?

The error comes up when I reboot after the above, just after the black windows xp logo screen with the blue progress bar. Windows gives me a memory address error (or I think it is, the long line with the letters and the numbers).

I don't believe there is any way to save the Winblows partition if they were both on the same drive. I've never heard of it being done anyway.

Did it! Uninstalled SuSE and saved Windows XP:
1. To Linux, console, "lilo -u /dev/hda" (twice to make sure that lilo boot is out)
2. Reboot, windows boots automatically, to Partition Magic 7, delete Linux partitions.
3. Left with Unallocated chunk, either shrink to minimum or create logical partition inside of it which will be seen by windows.
4. Voila!

Bravo! Thanks for the tutorial.

:D