I installed Mandrake 8.1 a while ago as a dual boot with Win98 and now I want to remove it. I can't boot to Linux any longer but I want to recover the 2 gigs of space back for Win98. How can I just wax all of the Linux stuff without killing Win98? I kinda tried to some stuff that another dude on here told me but I'm pretty illiterate. Please...Someone help me before I run out of disk space!!!!

*I am not an expert* (so use this advice with caution), but if I was trying to do this, I'd use a 3rd party partition manager like Partition Magic to delete the Linux partition and replace it with a FAT32 extended partition (or you could resize the Win98 partition to cover the entire hard drive if you're not bothered about partitioning; or if the Linux partition is sitting between two FAT32 partitions, like mine, you could resize either or both to fill the freed-up space).

When you tell it to create a new partition, or resize an existing one, PM will reformat the freed-up space and create a new partition (or add to an existing one) with the file system of your choice, so your linux install will be completely gone.

Then if you haven't already done so (if you can't boot Linux any more, you may already have done this bit) run fdisk /mbr from your handy win98 startup floppy (if you don't have one, in Win98 use the add/remove programs dialog/startup disk tab to make one) in order to remove the Linux bootloader, otherwise the system will continue to call LILO or GRUB, whichever, for the rest of time.

Partition Magic can be installed under Win98 before you make any changes - unless you've so little space left that there isn't room for it, in which case find a mate who uses it, borrow his rescue disks and run the program from them (boot with 1st rescue disk in fdd, then run program from 2nd rescue disk). That will give you enough functionality to nuke the Linux partition and resize the rest.

One word of warning - do *read the instructions* for Partition Magic before you use it, or talk to someone who knows it well; though even in rescue disk form (without the wizards) it's much friendlier and safer for the non-techie than the alternative (fdisk) you can still hose your system good if you make a mistake.



Jane

pls excuse length - it's the way I write I'm afraid :0

Thanks , I'll try it. I'm going to see if I can find a copy of Partition Magic and go from there. It might take me some time so I may re-post in a week or so if you don't mind checking back. Thanks again

Dean

Like he said, just delete the linux partition and resize your windows one.

Any way to do it without Partition Magic?

There are other 3rd party partition managers around, and windows provides its own, called fdisk - you'll find it on the win98 startup disk. Boot the machine with the startup disk in the drive, get to the A:\ prompt, then type fdisk - and you're in.
It's very destructive, though. Really it's intended for reformatting your entire hard drive, then making new partitions. And Windows isn't terribly good :0 at recognising Linux partitions anyway. So you'll have to be very careful what you do with it, or you'll lose your working OS and all your data.
It's so long since I used fdisk - and that was to format an entire hard drive before installing an OS from scratch - that I can't guide you; I simply have no idea what it would tell you was on your drive, given that the linux partition will be in an unsupported format.
I'm sure someone else out there can help - or you could try Google searching on something like 'partition manager' or 'partitioning hard drive' or 'delete partition' or...insert whatever seems appropriate.
It's even possible Micro$oft's Knowledge Base might be helpful - perhaps more so than this board, since this question isn't very linux-y any more
(Tho' last time I used information from *that* source, if I'd done exactly what it said rather than using the grey matter, I'd have ended up in far deeper brown stuff than I was to start with...)

Slegdehammer option: If all else fails (and as long as you have a copy of your chosen OS ) - back up your data to CD or Zip or whatever you have, fdisk the entire drive, set up new partitions and reinstall windows. But if you have any non-standard device drivers on board, make sure you know where you got them from, so you can find and install them again afterward.

Good Luck

Jane