help! partition death!
 

yes, yes, another fatal blow due to partitioning, this time it is me.

i was running windows me and fedora core 3 on a logical partition on a 40 BG maxtor HD.the problem arose when I decided to delete all the partitions and reformat my drive so that I could reinstall linux and windows from scratch.

I used Partition Magic and started to delete all my partitions, which is where i think you will tell me I screwed up. I know.

Consequently my computer stopped booting and gave me the GRUB command line ( grub> ). I then reinstalled windows me, which worked.

Now my problem is that my 40 GB hard drive has shrunk to 29.9 GB and Partition Magic wont work no matter what.

If I reformat my entire hard drive ( how do I do that ? by using the format command in DOS?) will I get my space back?

someone please tell me I can get my space back!
help!,
manas

Boot up off a win98 cd or boot disk or something, however you can get to a DOS prompt, maybe a Knoppix CD but I've never tried this way. Then run fdisk and delete all the partitions and afterwards run fdisk /mbr :)

can you please give me the exact steps on how to do this?

where do i open fdisk from?

Do you have a windows 98 boot disk at all or an installation CD? Or any linux live CDs lying around?

i have windows me installation cd...but windows me is already working so what help will that do?
when i reinstalled windows i thought it would format the complete hard drive before installing but it doesnt do that it just reinstalls
is there any application that will format my whole hard drive ( will format c:\ in ms dos work?) what should i do?

anyone any suggestions?

help!
 

i have a maxtor 40GB hard drive, on which i was running windows Me and linux fedora core 3 (logical partition)...later, i decided to delete all my partitions and format my hard drive and then reinstall WinMe....I used partition magic to delete the partitions...as soon as i deleted the first partition the computer stopped booting.
I then reinstalled Windows Me, and that was successful.
However now my 40 GB hard drive has shrunk to 29.9 GB since i've lost space due to the partitions.
I want to format my entire hard drive from scratch now.
How do I format my drive?
I read the "how to format your drive" page on webtechgeek.com but that explained how to format your SECOND hard drive.
I only have one hard drive and I would like to format it completely.I read that there is an FDISK application in Windows/DOS, can I use this to format my drive?
moreover, will this give me back my lost space, i.e, will it also format the parts of the disk that are not under windows control?
NOTE: Partition Magic has stopped working, so I can't use it.

yes from me boot disk use fdisk with fdisk you delete the partitions and make new ones etc
then format
format is seperat thing after fdisk
both win and linux will fomat a pariition
hope this helps

A WinMe disc won't help, you need to get a DOS prompt but format c: will not help in any way, you need to use fdisk. If Windows works go download Knoppix or DamnSmallLinux and burn the image onto a CD and boot from that. Once it loads open up a terminal and type in fdisk /dev/hda and remove all the partitions.

Why did you start a new thread? That's not a very smart thing to do matey, especially with your incredible thread-titling scheme :rolleyes:

Please do not post the same thread more than once. Picking the most relevant forum and posting it once there makes it easier for other members to help you and keeps the discussion all in one place.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/rules.php

This time around I merged your two threadsd ...