need a little help
 

hey everyone, i recently recieved a computer with lindows 4.5 os on it and i have no clue how to format my hard drive, i have searched this site and found a couple of ways to do it but none has worked so far, i have tried fdisk and deleting the partitions and that has not worked, i also tried setting my bios to read off only the cd i have and my computer just jumps right into lindows, i have become very frustrated and i seek some guidance, any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Diggy

Go to a bootdisk site - I usually use putergeek one, but there are many. Download and create a Windows bootdisk. Boot from bootdisk, when you get to a command prompt (if it's not a:, type in a: to switch) and type in fdisk /mbr to clear the master boot record and then type in fdisk to take you to the pages for removing your partitions.

For clearer instructions, follow the "My Public Bookmarks" link in my signature - I have a couple of "How to Remove Linux" links in there.

Hi Diggy,

The first question that comes to my mind is "Why do you want to format your drive?". Since I suppose you do not wish to have an unformatted computer lying around, you are going to install something else later on, be it Windows or another Linux. In either cases, you'll need CDs to install from, which have partitioning tools in them. So you may try to download a CD from your Lindows, burn it and boot from that.

Also are you sure that the "only" CD you got is bootable? If so you have probably misconfigured your BIOS, probably when setting the boot order of drives. The first drive that is to be read has to be the CD, and then the Harddisk. You'll need to make a similar tweak if you want to follow XavierP's advice with the boot disk, by giving the floppy drive a more important priority then the harddrive.

Last but not least, it is quite understandable that fdisk didn't work from Lindows. You cannot partition the drive you use. You need to boot from another distro, possibly a "live" one. If you want a practical solution for your partitioning needs, I recommend using PowerQuest's PartitionMagic software. It comes with two floppies that you can boot and do anything you fancy with your drives. If you do not wish to expend any money on that, I'll be happy to send you mines..

Cheers,
BB