Hi

I installed Suse Linux 9.1 on my pc, and am now not sure how to uninstall it.

I can log into it, but there are obviously no uninstall options in the Windows XP partition.

Could someone advise me step by step, the best way to get it off my system .. if theres an easy way (and you'd think there would be) I would be very grateful


thanks

Two problems needed to be considered.

(1) If you can boot to it that means Suse boot loader is in the MBR. You need a bootable DOS floppy with fdisk.exe inside or a Windows installation CD to overwrite Suse's boot loader. Which one has you got?

For floppy just boot it up and type
For installation CD, boot it up until it stops to ask to select 3 choices. Choose "Recovery Console" to get to command prompt and type
(2) Suse can disappear in 5 minutes flat in XP by

right click My Computer/Manage/Storage/Disk Management, then right click the Suse partition and choose delete. Just make sure it is the Suse partition as in XP you can only tell by its position, size and being a partition with no assigned letter by XP

Yes I have a windows XP Boot disk, so i'll just put this in and take the appropriate action

or should i delete the partition in XP first ?

thanks again

Doesn't matter at all.

The delete partition can be used to create a FAT or NTFS partition and quick-formatted to become available for use, still within the 5 minutes!

i know when it installed it created a swap drive and there appears to be a 5gb partition for linux and a 1gb partition which i think is the swap drive .. do i need to delete that as well .. although it might not be the swap drive

it is showing 2 unknown (healthy) partitions one at 5.10GB and one at 1004MB strangley both showing as 100% free

Yeah, you might as well delete your swap partition if you have no use for it.

Yes ive got to the recovery consol, but XP is asking me for an administrator password to access it, and i haven't set one

is there a default admin password for the recovery consol

if i had set one it could only be one thing as all my passwords are the same and its not recognising it

Otherwise its coming up with a "GRUB>" COMMAND line .. any ideas ?

If you didn't set an administrator password, you should just be able to press Enter.

no its not having it ...... i have a lot of passwords at work .. i know i always use the same one

is there some way to do something with this GRUB> command line . .as i don't think i'm gonna get in this way .. and id rather not rebuild the whole machine from scratch

i am using an ACER set of recovery disks when i rebuild and it dosen't even give me the opportunity to put in admin passwords .. i don't think so i don't see how there could be one

I suppose i could re-install linux again ..... sigh - re-access windows and check out the admin password

No! If you have a Grub prompt

Let me give you the instruction to boot up Windows.

Do a
and Grub will list out the partitions in the first disk

If you have XP it should have a NTFS partition type ID 0x7. XP is usally in the first partition. Grub counts from 0 so your XP should be in 1st partition of 1st disk known as (hd0,0) to Grub. In that case you can boot XP up "manually" with these lines
Report if you can do this or not.

I Can do that, but will I have to do it on every boot

thanks

i think the problem with my xp is that i'm running XP Home and apparently the administrator acount is only accessable in Safe Mode .. according to an article online .... of course this could be wrong searching google at the minute .. i have installed linux while i was waiting for your last answer so i'm back where i started ......

i am unable to access the internet in linux because when i go to install it, it asks me for dsl password details, however as i am using a d-link router the password is entered there in the router itself .... not sure how to set this up in linux

thanks a lot for you help anyway

explanation for recovery console situation has turned up

"Recovery Console Password
On many XP installations you can't start the Recovery Console because it won't recognize your password. This registry edit causes the Recovery Console not to ask for a password. This works for both XP Home and XP Professional.

Start | Run | Regedit
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Setup\RecoveryConsole
Set the DWORD SecurityLevel value to 1
Exit Registry and Reboot"

might need to give this a go

You can make Suse boot XP very quickly.

Just amend its /boot/grub/menu.lst by addition the manual instruction you boot XP. Use the defualt to point to the booting alternative. Grub counts from 0 show
default 0 = boot the 1st system after timeout
default 1 = boot the 2nd system after timeout and so on

The speed Grub wait for you in the timeout statement. Just reduce the number if you want a fast boot and increase the number if you want Grub to wait longer for you to decide.

ok I have uninstalled suse successfully using the reg hack to disable the recovery console

thanks a lot

I will investigate how to get my internet connection working and then install it again

I have a d-link ADSL router that autodetects my ISP hence no need to put in the password linux asks me for during installation

mmmmmmmm problem