I had Mandrake 9.1. I put in my windows 98se CD in. I booted from that and chose start computer with CDROM support. I type in [ FDISK /MBR ]. Then [ FDISK ]. I chose Y or LBA, then chose to delete a partition. Then chose delete non-dos partitions and it says about like this:

Delete Non-DOS Partition

Current fixed disk drive: 1


Then it says Press Esc to return to FDISK Options_. So I hit the esc key, and nothing happens!. It's froze! the '_' is still blinking, but I cant do anything.

I tryed to install windows from there and it says it cant write to the boot record and exits. Any help would be great! Thanks

In my experiences the windows version of fdisk doesn't do a good job of deleting linux partitions. Your mandrake cd probably has some more versatile version of fdisk that can be used to delete your linux partitions. After you have gotten rid of your linux partitions you should be able to make new fat partitions and install windows on them. The real question is... why would you want to? There are other good distributions besides mandrake.

Make sure you are deleting all non-dos partitions. Then make sure that you delete all extended partitions before any primary. Then create your new partitions, exit, reboot and go.

Teacup: You havn't lost a me yet with linux. I'm just trying to put Windows back on that machine because is a perfict gaming machine. I have another computer (this one) I'm going to put Linux on

I tryed putting my Mandrake CD in and it says "Loading into memory" and after a few minutes it says it couldn't uncompress the second stage. I guess i'll try the Linux fdisk stuff.

Your best bet on trying to get rid of any and all partitions would be a little utility you can load on a windows bootable floppy called Delpart. There are many places to download it from.

# Freeware partitioning software
/dosutils/fips20 on install disk
Ranish Partition Manager
Tom's Root and Boot Floppy has Linux fdisk

# How do I uninstall Linux completely and keep/use Windows only?
How to Remove Linux and Install Windows 2000
How to Remove Linux and Install Windows XP
You can remove lilo from the mbr with
/sbin/lilo -u
You can remove grub or lilo from the mbr by booting with a Windows 98 boot floppy (at the prompt, type fdisk /mbr), or by using the Windows XP Recovery Console or the Windows 2000 Recovery Console

Thanks everyone for helping! What I ended up doing is downloading a microsoft partition deleting tool "delpar". It deleted all my partitions. So now after I install Win98SE on the machine and get it working good, I'm going to need some help on installing drivers for a modem on Mandrake.

Rotts o ruck!

I have it working acceptably on one box out of 3. It works better with older stuff.

I think there must be a bug in the Nvidia drivers for w98se as that machine will boot properly about 1 out of 3 times after installing the drivers.

I wish I could find a good windows help forum, but that is a wasted wish, I am afraid.

Just happened to read this thread. I am a real Linux newbie. I upgraded my modem from 28.8 to an external 56k one. It is a local (NZ) companies "own" brand - Dick Smith Electroincs. I simply plugged it in and configured it manually in RedHat, and no problems. I have a dual boot with Win 95 which tells me new hardware every time (rarely) I boot there.

My understanding is that external hardware modems go fine with Linux.

Cheers
Rose