how to remove existing dual boot winxp and fc5?
 

i've dual boot winxp and fc5 installed, with fc5 installed via default options(suppose grub was installed to the mbr this way).so far it looks fine and haven had any probs loggin into the 2 via grub.

im still on testing phase(trying out)and due to some reasons i wana remove fc5 and winxp,and reinstall the same dual boot winxp and fc5 config again.

I've set my bios to boot from cdrom as 1st.but when i insert my winxp cd to boot,it freezes with black screen after the prompt "setup is determining hardware configuration" from winxp setup.

So im wondering mayb my steps are incorrect to remove and reinstall them and suspect the problem lies with grub.

anyone here might provide me with some help and advice on doing this?

much appreciated:)

You probably have more than one active (bootable) partition - if so, set just the XP one as active, and try again.

thanks for the prompt reply!

im not sure if i have more than one active boot partitions and how do i check if i do?im still quite new to this..

and if i do have more than one active,how can i set the xp one to active?

Let's see the output from a FC terminal session of "fdisk -l" (ell, as in list). If that gets a "command not found" message try "/sbin/fdisk -l"

i've tried fdisk -1 and this is the outcome:
[... ~]$ fdisk -1
bash: fdisk: command not found

so i tried /sbin/fdisk -1 and this is the outcome:
[... ~]$ /sbin/fdisk -1
/sbin/fdisk: invalid option -- 1

Usage: fdisk [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK Change partition table
fdisk -l [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK List partition table(s)
fdisk -s PARTITION Give partition size(s) in blocks
fdisk -v Give fdisk version
Here DISK is something like /dev/hdb or /dev/sda
and PARTITION is something like /dev/hda7
-u: give Start and End in sector (instead of cylinder) units
-b 2048: (for certain MO disks) use 2048-byte sectors

i ain't good with command lines now,how to run the fdisk in this case??

anyone out there?

I specifically said "...(ell, as in list)"
Looks like you used a character 1 (one) instead.

its a smaller letter L not one (1)

hi there and thanks for sticking arnd

realise the mistake my bad..

tried this immediately upon tat and heres wat ive got:
----------------------------------------------------------
Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250056171008 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30400 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 5230 42009943+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 5231 16708 92197035 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda3 16709 30400 109980990 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5 9060 16708 61440561 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 5231 5243 104359+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 5244 9059 30651988+ 8e Linux LVM

Partition table entries are not in disk order
---------------------------------------------------------
fyi.

If it was booting from the CDROM and you didn't see a grub menu, I doubt that the grub boot loader was run at all. You might want to change the PNP setting in the BIOS and try again. Another thing you could try is removing any usb peripherals that you don't need to perform an installation. I think that when it is probing for hardware there is something that jams it up.

If I read that correctly, your disk contains three physical partitions, sda[1-3]. sda2 is an "extended" (green) partition, containg (red) one NTFS partition, the Linux \boot partition, and a Linux "logical volume" containing, presumably, the swap and root (/) devices.

I suspect that Windoze is confused by the logical partition containing non-Windoze partitions.

Since you intend to re-install both OS, why not just delete ALL the partitions on your HD before you start your new installations?

hi all

yea PTrenholme,u r right about the partitions.

But if i were to delete off all the partitions,mind if i ask:
1)do i loggin into xp and remove the linux partitions first?(but this way as grub was installed to mbr and i felt i may create more mess if i simply remove linux first?)
2)Or i use linux to remove xp first?(but in this way will it solve the problem?as in i will be able to start xp installation via cd this time?)

pls advice

Windoze should be fine with that partition structure - so long as it can find a bootable primary partition (sda1 in this case) it should proceed.
I can't see any obvious reason why it should fail during the hardware scan unless it needs a (separate) driver for the SATA drive. If it does, one wonders how Windows was installed originally.

As for deleting the partitions, I'd do it from Linux personally. When I last had an issue like this I just zeroed out the first few sectors of the disk (including the MBR). Windows see the disk as unformatted and asks if you want to use it.

hi there,

have got it done after few trials and errors there cos of the commands.
thanks again!:)