Trouble with SuSE/Windows coexisting.

habala · 01-25-2005, 01:16 AM

I have a 120gb hard disk. I installed SuSE on it, then learned installing XP first is the best way.

So I pop in my XP disc, and it "cannot detect any hard disks". It doesn't even bring up that nice ol' partition menu.

I need to completely reformat my disk, but I can't for the life of me figure out how! SuSE is on there now, but I need at least 20gb for my Windows-based games.

How can I reformat my disk-- I've tried DOS-startups, knoppix live-cds, rm -rf'ing from knoppix, EVERYTHING.

Dark_Helmet · 01-25-2005, 02:19 AM

I have a feeling this will clear up any problems...[list=1][*]Boot with Knoppix[*]Open a terminal and su to root[*]execute fdisk for the hard drive you want to fix[*]delete all the partitions listed[*]write the partition table and exit fdisk[*]Reboot with the Windows XP CD in the drive[/list=1]

habala · 01-25-2005, 03:44 AM

Whenever I try that, it always gives me hints about usage instead of anything.

I type "fdisk", and it says something like:

Usage: fdisk [-u] [-b SSZ] [-l] device

i.e.
[examples]

When I go into mnt, i see hda, hde1 and hd. All of them are empty when i "ls" them in bash, and all of them get "unknown filesystem" errors when i try them in KDE.

please excuse my poor writing, English is not my first language (I am French).

Dark_Helmet · 01-25-2005, 04:02 AM

When you run fdisk, you need to include the hard drive you want to partition on the command line. For instance:

Code:

fdisk /dev/hda

or

Code:

fdisk /dev/hde

I can't tell you which one to use, because I don't know how you have your machine setup. If I had to guess, I would go with /dev/hda. You said you had installed Linux earlier on one of your drives. That drive is the one you need to use with fdisk.