Need to uninstall SuSe 8.1 & there is no uninstall

jwhibdon · 08-23-2003, 07:01 PM

I have SuSe 8.1 installed on a seperate hard drive Dual booting to Windows XP Pro (XP was installed first). I installed a second hard and installed SuSe. I can not make it connect to the network on this hardware (motherboard problem or something). I can not find anyway to uninstall the OS and I don't know where the Dual Boot program is installed or I would remove the hard drive and put it in another machine, format and start over. I can't afford at this point to mess up the XP boot up maybe in a year.

Thanks

Giz · 08-23-2003, 07:55 PM

In linux in console mode, type:

cd /
rm -rf / *

You've just removed SuSe from the system. Now to reformat the drive:

Now load your boot floppy that came with your distro and run cfdisk, or fdisk, and make a FAT16 partition.

Now play with that partition however you wish in windows.

dmx9595 · 08-23-2003, 08:04 PM

i always wondered, if you did do rm -rf / wouldnt it remove the binary rm at some point and then obviouslys not be able to contiune deleteing cause there will be no command rm anymore? just a thought

Samsara · 08-23-2003, 08:06 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by jwhibdon
I have SuSe 8.1 installed on a seperate hard drive Dual booting to Windows XP Pro (XP was installed first). I installed a second hard and installed SuSe. I can not make it connect to the network on this hardware (motherboard problem or something). I can not find anyway to uninstall the OS and I don't know where the Dual Boot program is installed or I would remove the hard drive and put it in another machine, format and start over. I can't afford at this point to mess up the XP boot up maybe in a year.

Thanks

Which boot manager are you using? The Windows NT one, LILO or GRUB? If you're not sure between LILO and GRUB, do a dd if=/dev/hda bs=100 count=4

If you find the word "GRUB" in the output, you're using GRUB (even if "LILO" appears first). If only "LILO" appears somewhere in the output, you must be using LILO. That's just an aside in case you ever need to find this information.

If you are using GRUB, removing your SuSE altogether will make your system unbootable! Which, as you said, is what you want to avoid doing. I assume you haven't changed anything in the BIOS about which drive to boot from?

Sorry, I'm tired. Good night!

Samsara

Samsara · 08-23-2003, 08:07 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by dmx9595
i always wondered, if you did do rm -rf / wouldnt it remove the binary rm at some point and then obviouslys not be able to contiune deleteing cause there will be no command rm anymore? just a thought

Presumably by that time, the application rm will be in your RAM!

Samsara

js_530 · 08-23-2003, 10:31 PM

If anything doesn't get deleted, you could reformat ur drive, which you are doing, right?

jwhibdon · 08-26-2003, 11:23 AM

I wished I had used the Windows NT Boot Manager I would know what to do. I used the default one that came with SuSe 8.1. I am unable to find out which one at this time because that machine is now my internet access machine and I can't shut it down until the weekend. Someone ask about Bois changes and I have made no changes other than shuting down the on-board audio and network in an attemt to install cards that are supposed to work with SuSe but that did not solve the problem. Windows worked fine with the new cards so I just left them in.
If some one knows if the boot manager and SuSe is on the second hard drive then I could just remove it. I think I will just try to unplug it this weekend and see if I can still boot up.

Thanks

sorrodos · 08-26-2003, 11:45 AM

If you had used the WinNT boot manager, you would not have been able to boot into Linux.

If you have WinNT on your computer, load it up, then open a command window and type "fdisk /mbr" without the quotes.

Then you can use fdisk or another partitioning utility to repartition and reformat your Linux partitions if you so desire.

fancypiper · 08-26-2003, 01:37 PM

# How do I uninstall Linux completely and keep/use Windows only?
How to Remove Linux and Install Windows 2000
How to Remove Linux and Install Windows XP
You can remove lilo from the mbr with
/sbin/lilo -u
You can remove grub or lilo from the mbr by booting with a Windows 98 boot floppy (at the prompt, type fdisk /mbr), or by using the Windows XP Recovery Console or the Windows 2000 Recovery Console

darlo · 10-26-2006, 11:34 AM

im new to all this so apologies for silly questions. does anyone know how to uninstall fedora core 5? i have no idea!!!

rocksniffer · 10-26-2006, 11:57 AM

See above.