Unable to login to window and format it with window xp cd
 

Hi friends,
i'm new to linux from india.i have recently installed fedora 10 in my laptop along with windows xp.configuration of my laptop is

intel dual core
2 GB RAM
160 GB HDD
DVD-RW
I installed fedora10 in a separated partition of XP(sp2). After installed i cant login to windows xp.When the boot screen of windows came system get restarts.But i can login to fedora10.
when i tried to format c drive with window bootable cd.I can't format c drive,it doesn't show the formatting process of windows cd it showed only the initial heading.But when i insert the fedora DVD it get booted and show all the procedure.

Friend, how can i format windows xp (c drive) without affecting the fedora10 using fedora10 dvd from Linux(fedora10) os.....



Thanking You

Log into Fedora

Open a terminal

#su

<root password>

#fdisk -l

Post output here

I typed that command and the following is the output displayed......what can i do after that......

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf35cf35c

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 3824 30716248+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 3825 19456 125564040 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda3 * 19457 19457 8032+ e W95 FAT16 (LBA)
/dev/sda5 3825 7648 30716248+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 7649 11472 30716248+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7 11473 16571 40957686 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda8 16572 18101 12289693+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda9 18102 18126 200781 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 18127 19456 10683193+ 8e Linux LVM

Don't think the OP has been telling us everything.

The sda1 can be formatted by the XP installation Disc but it is only 31Gb large and is a primary partition.

The XP installation disc could have difficulty in formatting the logical partitions sda5 to sda8 unless the sda1 is bootable. The installation disc is to install the system and not a formatting tool. Xp cannot be installed in a logical partition as a stand alone system because it must be booted from a primary partition. sda1 does not appear to be bootable because it would mean another Win2k, Xp, Vista or Win7 is there as older MS systems cannot be installed in a NTFS partition. If the OP has any of the about then it wouldn't be a need to format the partitions with an installation disc as the OS itself, residing in sda1, is far more easier and quick to do that job.

I have a Vista in my sda1 and I installed Win7-32bit and Win7-64bit in sda6 and sda7. So the key is to have sda1 working as a bootable partition. This means it has a boot loader with which MS systems installed in logical partitions can rely it for multi-boot.

The other possibility of XP installer refusing to work is the illegal entry of sda3. Fat16 has a finite limit of addressability because the number of commbinations in a 16 bit format will mean data stored higher than 2Gb in a hard disk cannot be accessed. Putting a Fat16 partition, appears to be about 8Mb large, near the tail of a 160Gb means it is not what MS systems could understand, though Linux may be able to use it in its own special way. If the MS installer is not happy with the disk it will refrain from work with it. The same partition is installed at the beginning of the disk may be acceptable to the XP installer.