Really need help...
 

I'm new to these forums, and I don't know how much I'll post here... but I have a big Linux related problem...

Recently, I installed Linux on a smaller slave drive, hoping to have a good dual booting system... My main and most important drive is a Windows drive, the primary master... Now, though, I'm planning on removing linux, but I'm not sure which path I should take... I'll describe how I installed it...

At first, I installed the new drive in my computer, and it worked nicely enough... Windows displayed it as drive E or so... I formatted the second hard drive to prepare it for Linux - a friend said that I should use FAT32 (I believe, because Linux doesn't work well with NTFS, or so he says). I proceeded to install linux...

Well, now linux is installed, but I'm having some errors with it...

I can't do much with it... I think I really just installed it out of novelty...
When booting, I get problems... I'm not sure which boot loader I have (it's the more colourful/graphical one, Grub?), but sometimes it says "Disc load error", at which point I have to keep turning my computer on and off until it loads into windows. Linux will load up fine, but I can't do anything with Linux at all... I don't know how to properly use it, so I want to remove it... Now, this is very inconvenient that windows does not boot up correctly...

Now, I can't even recognize my second hard drive when I AM in windows... It just isn't appearing in My Computer... I was wondering how I should go about making my system into simply a Windows only system.. How would I re-install my original boot loader? Can I format the linux hard drive from within Linux? I'm confused what to do, so I really really need an answer...

Thanks

# 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

Damn....
 

Thanks!

But I'm still in an awkward position...

Turns out I've got Grub installed after all... Windows XP is my native OS. I wasn't able to remove the grub boot loader through windows.. And I don't have a Windows 98 start-up disc - I tried making an MS-DOS start-up disc, but it just said, "Please re-insert the disc", something along those lines. So, I couldn't try the fdisk/mbr, unless I can somehow get a Win 98 start-up disc. I don't have a true administrator password, because I never set one up when we first got this computer... I have three accounts that use this computer that are all administrator, but the Windows XP Recovery Console requires you to have the "Administrator" account's password, and the only way I can do this is to get into safe mode... However, because of Grub (I can only assume, I've never been too good at getting into safe mode, Microsoft doesn't give a very good explanation), I am unable to log safe mode and create my administrator password that I need for the XP Recovery Console...

How do I get into safe mode? I tried pressing F8 on restart, but that only let me boot Removable drive/disc, Hard drive, and Cd-rom. Perhaps there is a way I can just format the second hard drive with Linux on it? But Win XP can't even recognize it right now, and so far, my attempts at alternate bootings haven't been working... How can I fix my problems?!

If you've got DOS, just sys a: and it'll give you a bootable disk. Copy fdisk to it. Set your computer's BIOS to boot from the floppy if it isn't already. If you don't have DOS, you can download rescue disks at various DOS sites.

I'm not sure about making an XP bootdisk - MS claims not to be able to fit the kernel and necessary files on a floppy any more. You can make a sort of 'jumpstart' disk, but not a true bootdisk, I don't think.

Oh yeah - FreeDOS has a bootable kernel and an fdisk that I believe has the /mbr capability, though I can't really remember.

-- Wait. Now that I think on it, maybe you'd better wait until someone else can say. Maybe you shouldn't use DOS16 tools but DOS32 or NT like fancypiper was saying.