i've created two partitions on my 40gig drive that is 22gig and 18gig. The 22gig,which was the first one, i installed in it Windows 98. Then after i installed Linux Mandrake but i think it just overwrite Windows so i removed Mandrake. Using fdisk /mbr to remove it and when i checked on FDISK and i go to option 4(display partitions) it has the extended dos partition as the whole 40gig. When i was about to create a Primary dos partition it just consumes 80% of the drive so i just get 32gig i guess. How can access the 20% of my drive that was lost????? can somebody help me??

just to add.. i was about to dual boot windows and linux.

Essentially, you have to use some partitioning tool and change the Linux partitions into a fat32 filesystem. See the Microsoft guides even though they are for 2k and xp, the proceedure is the same.

# Freeware partitioning software
Ranish Partition Manager
Tom's Root and Boot Floppy has Linux fdisk

# 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

Oh, I would zero that drive out and start over.

Boot into Linux as I mentioned above and command (assuming first ide master):

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

When it is wiped, then if should partition correctly if the drive jumpers are set correctly and the mobo supports IDE drives above the 32 gb limit.

im researching this now... i just want to clarify if it is possible that i could still access the 20% part of my drive that i can't access? just to assure..