mandrake 8.1 install, hd gone!
 

Hey people.. how'z it goin'?
I have a quite weird problem (at least to me). I had a dual-boot on my system: WinXP and Red Hat. I had installed Red Hat 7.2 on a partition on my hd. Recently, I thought I wanted to try Mandrake 8.1, so I downloaded the distro from the net and put it on my FAT partition. And then I started to install it. Since I thought I wanted to make a sorta clean install, I tried to re-format my linux partition. Using Diskdrake, I cleared up the linux partiton and I was then asked to reboot. Unfortunately, once rebooted, Mandrake (installation) reported that I had free spaces through the entire disk (What??? I was so shocked!). That was very weird to me. I only deleted my linux partition and reformatted that partition, not the entire disk. With hope, I quitted the installation and inserted a Win 98 SE cd into my cdrom to get into DOS. Luckily, when I typed "dir", it showed me that I still have my old files in FAT partition. So I thought I didn't lose my stuff yet. So in order to boot into windows using NT loader I gotta clear up my MBR. So I did "fdisk /mbr" and restarted my system. I thought everything was back to normal. From that moment I hated Mandrake. So I downloaded Red Hat 7.2 again and tried to install it. Unfortunately, Red Hat (installation) complained that I didn't have a recognizable hard drive. That was so weird because it never happened before.
Anybody .... please guide me how to correct the problem. I want to install Red Hat back... :(
Thanks in advance.

I had a similar problem with Mandrake 7.1 a while back...ever since I've been a Red Hat fan, even though I'm still a total newbie to linux. I never did figure out what went wrong, but I feel your pain. :mad:

That's why I installed Mandrake 8.1 on its own HD, on its own computer...now I just have to figure out how to network the thing...

I also had wierd stuff happen installing mandrake 8.1. had redhat, reformated hd, fresh win98 install, took partion magic and made some free space like I did for redhat. boot up mandrake 8.1 off cd as per instructions and go thru install as I did with red hat. mandrake ate up all of win98, bye bye bill gates. only thing I have to do now is learn how to ask questions about linux and my usb scanner doesnt work. finding linux does things better and quicker once you learn how to make things happen. and yes I am climbing out of the rutt I got into with microsoft. John