TRAPPED!! I Think Can not go Back.
 

Hi every one!!
Got a seroius problem. I installed Fedora core 5 in acer travel mate 3000.Every thing is fine.But now i want to take off linux and put windows back again then again put linux to make dual boot.(As we know windows over writes the boot loader)

Now i tried dozen times to take off linux but can not.I booted with the Acer restore cd,win 2000pro/Server/XP But non of tem can not format the disk.I mean the bootable disk boots up but after that is gets hang.(It goes till the step, when we boot from cd and it says "press any key to boot from cd" Then after this gets hang.i can see the hard disk led on .but......

What do i do????????

its because winos doesn't recognizes linux filesystems. you can try to make a separate win partition from under linux. if you have non-critical data in some partition move it to some other place and free that partition. format it in ntfs/fat32 and install winos there. next time use the linux install disk to restore the bootloader.

or you can use the linux install disk itself to remove linux. just go to the point where the installer asks you to partition your disk. choose disk druid or fdisk then choose to format the drive you want in fat. remember but winos will need a primary partition or else it won't work.

First the "it's hopeless" comment, and then a suggestion that might work.

I am wondering if it is possible to do what you want. Specifically, I wonder if the restore cd requires some evidence of the original Windows installation as an "anti-piracy" measure.

Assuming it can be done, perhaps the restore cd is not happy with the MBR. KNOPPIX has a program called install-mbr which "is useful if you want to remove lilo or grub completely from the MBR so Windows can boot by itself, or so you can install Windows to a hard drive that previously used Linux." (p 176, Knoppix Hacks by Kyle Rankin, ISBN 0-596-00787-6). You can give it a try and see if it helps. I believe everything on the KNOPPIX disk is free software, so if you don't want to buy or burn a KNOPPIX CD you should be able to find a download you can run from your existing Fedora installation. Of course, if you do that, don't expect to boot Fedora again unless you have a rescue floppy.

It will work. your solution seems way too much! its a simple problem with a very simple solution and you don't need to go buy a book then read it. again go download knoppix, for what? just to fix MBR!

like what? search and recover fragments of old windows installation?

@roopunix
with the acer travel mate, what bundled os did you got? must be xp home ed assuming thats what acer supplies with its acer aspire. anyway, you can install any winos after that.

Ok Guys!
Thanx for the replies.
The OS i got with the travel mate is windows XP Pro.Now when i boot with the CD it says.No free space to install Windows.As Prozac says....I can make a partition out of the free space and install windows..Ok but after installing windows the boot record will be over written and i need to manually restore it..I am not sure if i can do that..Second thing there is another way is booting the Linux CD and choosing Disk Druid to partition in Fat32/NTFSBut in Fedora core 5 you never get this option to manually create partition with Disk druid or what ever.I tried both with Graphic and Text mode installations.It does it automatically.
I think now i have to stick with linux for ever.I am more than happy with this but My Wifi is not working so........It is a Intel Pro wirelessB/G.

prozac,

Before you work yourself into a tizzy, realize that I had some network problems which delayed me. You had not posted when I started. If I had seen your posts, I would have moved on w/o posting.

Second, I quoted from I book. I did not tell roopunix to go buy it. Though it is a decent book.

Third, when I am confronted with several possible solutions to a problem, I will usually try the simplest first. My guess is that roopunix does the same. I was not certain what was on the Fedora install disk. Or for that matter, whether the original MBR was available for restoration.

Finally, any sane restoration disk would not care what, if anything, was on the hard drive. It would simply boot and do its work to restore the HD. This did not appear to be the case. I am sure you are as aware as I am that some strange nonsense goes on in the MS world. And certainly, in the past, when MS has offered disks for upgrades, they did check for a previous installation. I was merely speculating about what the issue might be.

@roopunix
I hope you solve your problem.

(P.S. When previewing this post, I noticed that roopunix has just posted, so once again are posts are crossing. These things happen.)

If the Fedora install disk has a rescue mode, you might be able to, after installing MS, boot into Fedora rescue mode and 1) mount your main Fedora partition, making sure you do not mount it as nodev, and 2) execute grub from a /mnt/hda1 chroot jail, where (for example) /dev/hda1 is where you mounted your partition. If you can do this, it should restore your MBR for booting Fedora. I also believe there is a way you can leave MS in control of the boot process and tell it to give you the option of which OS to boot. (google is your friend :))

At the risk offending prozac, I will mention that you could use KNOPPIX ( and probably some other live CDs) for changing partition tables, and other sundry rescue/maintainance tasks. I believe KNOPPIX has both parted and fdisk. If the Fedora install disk has rescue mode, you might be able to use that for the same purpose. (If you check this out, I would appreciate a post letting me know if your install disk has a rescue mode.)

If you can not do the chroot solution from rescue mode of the Fedora install disk, you can certainly do it from KNOPPIX. BTW, I am not trying to push KNOPPIX. There may be other live CDs that will do these things as well. It is just that KNOPPIX and Damn Small Linux are the two I am familiar with, and I am not sure DSL can handle everything you need. (Though it a nice compact live CD.)

At the risk of complicating matters further :) I am surprised a restore disk wont just wipe anything and everything. So are we wiping everything and starting over? I would suggest using a liveCD to wipe out evrything, make some partitions, then install windows and then linux again. My favorite liveCD for this purpose is the Gparted liveCD http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ it is small, lite and fast.

its not that hard to restore the bootloader. you haven't tried it for yourself and thats why the nervousness. its pretty simple and you will find tons of docs in the web. ofcourse we can offer more help if you are still uncertain.
is it so? I have never ever found a linux cd that didn't offer someway to partition your harddrive. Unfortunately, I haven't used fedora core 5 but it seems creepy they wouldn't offer something so basic like fdisk or cfdisk. The more i think of it, the more i get convinced you are missing it. fedora 1 and all Redhat uses same (or a bit modified) installer AFAIK and I have used most of them and all of them gave u a way to partition your disk. I will have to check it out to be certain but.

@blackhole54
Ok i got it and sorry for that but your post seemed to refer to my post.
crossing? it's more like roopunix beat you to post and I too must have done the same. you might try typing more faster ;) just a suggestion.

@roopunix
could this be the one you're talking about?

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla....cgi?id=195454

brief overview:

jut try u use fdisk commnad .. if u wana get rid boting seqvence of linux use fdisk /mbr
it will erase your master boot record :rolleyes: :D

I believe you are referring to the MS fdisk command, as the Linux fdisk command has no such option. The starter of this thread does not have MS Windows on his machine anymore!!! In any case, I took post # 6 to mean that the MBR was no longer a problem.

u can surf on the net an get an win98 boot disk .. is not 2 hard to find