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Probably a stupid question, but would booting under Windows (floppy, CD, ehatever) and doing FDISK /MBR restore the MBR that grub seems to have clobbered?
I guess that would've been my suggested approach to the "reinstall Windows?" question also ... use a disk-wiping tool to zero out the drive, boot under Windows, rebuild the MBR, and install Windows as though the drive were brand new.
Of course, I have no idea if this would actually work ...
I'm sorry guys, but I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what the problem is here. From what I can understand out of all of this is that you've got a laptop with Linux installed (I'm assuming on one big partition over the entire HDD) and you can't re-install Windows because it can't find the partition to format it with NTFS or FAT32. Also, you have no floppy drive (which is no big deal) and you can't figure out how to boot via CD. Do I have it right?
If I do have it right, then why can't you do the following:
1) Insert the W2K or XP install discs
2) Boot the laptop to the CD
3) When it say "Press any key to boot from CD..." then press any key
4) Let it copy the files it needs to memory
5) Press "F8" to agree to the license
6) Tell it to install a new copy of Windows (Sorry, can't remember the exact wording)
7) Once it asks what partition you want it installed on press "D" to delete any and all partitions that are listed. Now once you press "D" you'll have to press (if I'm remembering correctly) "L" to confirm the deletion
8) Once they are all deleted, press "C" to create a new partition
9) Tell it what size you'd like the partition
10) Now let it format (hopefully you'll choose NTFS)
Post your results and make sure you post exact wording of the errors that you are getting. It's a lot easier to help if we have exact wording of the errors.
I thought he said that the Win2k and ME disks weren't working, though. I'm not sure what options have been cancelled out so far. Didn't he already try fdisk on DOS (Win startup disk) and on Linux? and he tried that idea of wiping the disk? Deanznet, what have you tried so far?
Eventhough he may have tried W2K and ME, I still don't see why he can't format the partition. There is no reason that I can think of that Linux would cause a problem formating the HDD from another medium or OS. The only thing that I can think of is that there is no partition and one needs to be created or a bad HDD.
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