Hello,

I have to reinstall the whole machine and I want to remove the linux partition
completely first. Now, I have FC2 and XP. What shall I do to delete the linux
partition without damaging the XP system?

Thanks so much for your help.

You can just delete it - from Linux or Windows fdisk. No special actions. If you need also to remove LILO/GRUB use command like lilo -u on Linux or fdisk /mbr on WIndows (after booting from a boot disk).

You can just boot to Windows and from it's Disk Management remove the Linux partition. If you have some kind of boot loader (grub, lilo etc) you have to boot to windows' recovery console (boot with Windows CD) and fix the boot record (if you don't want to keep the loader anymore).

If you're just going to re-install Linux, then you can remove and recreate the partition when installing the new copy.

I have a similar question; what if you had the disk geometry problem when you first installed FC2? Thanks to a few online faqs, I was able to fix the problem and get my WinXP partition to load again, but I'm not sure if I can as easily remove Linux, as Windows based partition programs (like Power Quest Partition Magic) think the entire partition table is bad. I was thinking that I could perhaps use Knoppix to access the Linux partition and remove it, but I'm not sure how to (or if I'll even need to) fix the disk geometry so that I can resize the Windows partition again. I had thought about just using a program like Symantec Ghost to make an image of the Windows partition, then reformat the entire drive and image the data back over, but Ghost sees the partition table as bad also. Any help in this would be greatly appreciated.

To safely remove Linux, just boot into windows and go to the disk manager and delete the linux partions and then download Easy BCD, start it, and then go to BCD Backup/Repair and reset hte BCD congiguration and then go to add new entry and choose your current's OS type and the drive that your OS current is installed on and choose add entry.

Besides from that you are resurrecting a six yoears old thread, this will only work on Vista/7, while the OP used XP at that time. Also, the OP's last login to LQ was 2009, so I doubt that he needs this advice anymore.

Resurrected or not, it is current for me now and helped me

I agree with the Power Quest Magic--did not work with windows 7 and I do not have a cd with fdsk or fmbr which would do the trick. In XP I could have edited the boot loader to eliminate linux input. Ubuntu 10.4 LTS with unity is not working the way it should and I am frustrated and want a solution or I will have to live with windows--what a shame.