i apologize for being windy....however i had been booting mandrake with 98 and 2k. i had two hardrives. one with mandrake the other 98 and 2k. i decided that in order to learn mandrake and truly explore its capabilities that i would be best served dedicating a rig to just linux.... having said that i built a new rig. i used mandrake hd from the other rig in the new rig. in the mean time i knew there would be an issue with getting the other hd suitable for ms only environment..... i have not been able to remove the boot loader ( if that is the right term) so my question is. is there a utility that i can download that will restore my mbr back to front of the drive..... thanks for helping a really ignorant newbie out....

Try running the msdos version of fdisk from a windows boot or emergency disk. The command is: fdisk /mbr

that was the first option i attempted. in a nut shell any dos app i use will not recognize the hardrive because it does not see any drive. since this disk had two partitions, 98 and 2k.... and th other disk was the linux disk (which i wiped and reinstalled in another rig) the active disk was pulled. however i know that when i installed linux originally that it rearanged the mbr and controlled the boot loader, linux being the first option and an option for windows, at this point the linux boot loader gave control to the windows boot loader giving me the options of 98 or 2k...... i need to use some linux utlity to reset the mbr..... i tried the rescue option from the linux install disk..... but it does not find the linux loader to restore, as its on the other drive (was, its wiped now)

You should be able to boot with your win2k disk and restore the mbr.

i was thinking the same thing earlier today, when i got home and used the 2000 boot disks the installation died, stating that there was no hard drive detected......if u used a third party software to format the drive, try using those utility to restore or diagnose....
back to squares. is there any linux utility that repairs the mbr to a ms status.....

Try using fdisk /mbr twice:

a:\fdisk /mbr
a:\fdisk /mbr

I have had what sounds to be the same problem you are having, and this works every time. If you cannot get your 2k CD to auto install after this, then install DOS first then it should work. There is a freebie product out there called delpart.exe. It is good at removing partitions. Just do a web search for it.

/b

well, nothing has worked. i refuse to beleive that this drive is dead. fdisk does not update mbr code i cant define any partitions.
when i trie to install mandrake the install bombs. i used western digital diagnose utilities, to no avail......i am ready for that bottle of jack

Did you locate/try delpart?

i am in the process of looking for it, apparently there is a ms tool with the same name

Try here.
http://hercules.lss.ksu.edu/download...FF/delpart.exe

/b

yep, i found it, no joy..... it does not detect a hardrive.....however hte bios identifies the hardrive.....maybe the hardrive is smoked....i still refuse to believe that though

Can you put the hdd in question into another computer and try running delpart then?

You don't have really old system and new large hdd, do you?

/b

i built the system about two months ago. it was only intended to be a learning platform. its an amd tbird 950 with an el cheapo ecs integrated mobo and 320 meg of ram
i was actually contemplating trying to see the drive in my xp rig.....i let ya know how successfull i am

well. i appreciate all the help. the solution was physical...i had run outta of ideals.... so i checked the jumpers on the hard drive. set as the master (i knew that it would be) i figured i would set the jumper to cs. and put it on the ribbon that way. funny thing was the jumper was not down all the way. which is confusing the hell outta me....anyway ended up cs and rebooted fdisk worked, i am formatting the drive now....... all this time over something physical...aint that a gas. no wonder i the mndrk bombed....well i am at the point i wanted to be. again thanks for the help

Glad to hear you solved your problem. As for the jumper, the penguin did it.