Unistalling Redhat 8?

[PakiBlue]

Okay, I've a job on hand, keeping into account that I'm new to Linux world...
Let me introduce my system first...
Motherboard: 815 Intel original
Processor: 800 MHz Intel original
RAM: 256 MB
Harddisk: 40 GB (baracoda - little less than scsi)
------------
Now, I had win 2000 and and XP installed my system (with XP corrupted, and not in working condition). I have 4 partitions on my hard drive with C:\ = 5+ GB and other three with 10+ GB. I have win2k installed on C:\ and XP on D:\. No problem till now...
Then I ventured out for Redhat linux 8 (also note that I crashed my first hard disk while installing linux from this CD, though I checked the media and it was clean)...

Installating...
I choosed the drive E:\ for the installation and converted it to 'ext2' (really donno what really it is) and installed redhat with no problem with GRUB bootloader.

My share of problems
Now, the system is hell lot of slow when I boot my windows 2000 which is my primary concern and I installed Linux only to have some practice of it. It takes at least 2 mins to boot the win2k and what I feel is, I've screwed up my boot record. Also when I double click My Computer (open anyother application which browse all the drives) , the computer stop responding and I have to shut the application by ctrl+alt+del. Redhat Linux freezes after some time when I work in it.
I work as a professional graphic and web designer so the speed really matters for me, as you can note from my system specifications - I've this system for 2 weeks only, so nothing old stuff as such...

How I'm gona do it...?
What I feel like doing is, I'm going to install 'Partition Magic' in win2k and format and convert E:\ which has linux to FAT32 again - still not sure whether it would work or not. (not going to install linux on this hard drive until get a new one, as it used by whole the family and they really stare at me when working on this system)
Then I'm gona boot from windows bootdisk and run command
fdisk /mbr
to clean up my boot record as well

You recommendations?
That is how I'm gona do it but still waiting for your response. I don't wana loose any important data on my hard drive (which resides on seperate partition F:\). What I'm asking is, does the above method works or not? If not, how should I do it? I'm not concered about the first three partitions but F:\ which holds my data of hell lot of importance to me...

So any kind recommendations and helps?

Kind regards...

[slarty]

It depends how you installed the bootloader.

Firstly, back up any files from your Linux.

If you have lilo or grub installed in the MBR, boot of a win98 CD or floppy and type

fdisk /mbr

This will wipe out the lilo / grub master boot record and replace it with the Microsoft one (which will boot any M$ OS, as far as I know)

Then you can go into the disk administration utility in Windows 2000 (Is it under "Computer Management"?) and delete the Linux partition, or change it into a Windows one.

DO NOT delete the Linux partition until you've removed the bootloader, or your system may be rendered unbootable.

However, none of this is going to make your Windows 2000 any faster at all. Are you sure that's what's causing the problem?

If both Windows and Linux experience hangs / crashes and they started failing at about the same time, I'd suspect a hardware failure. The most common are intermittent memory or disk failure, so try running a memory tester, and look in the Linux / Windows logs for disk error messages.

[PakiBlue]

No, not a hardware, I suspect, as it was okay before installing Linux..
thanks for the suggestions and tips...
disk management utility in win2k, am not aware and and not sure that it will work as windows was unable to show the partition which have linux installed. btw, what is this 'ext2' and 'ext3' are?
Thanks buddy...

[phishphreek]

Disk management should* see the partitions.

Start- control panel - admin tools - computer management

goto the disk admin management tool

on my dual boot win2k and linux... it sees all of the partitions. the win2k partition is ntfs, if that makes any difference and the linux partition is ext3

ext2 and ext3 are the linux filesystems. ext2 is a little older and ext3 is newer with journaling.

here is some documentation on the extended file system
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Filesystems-HOWTO-6.html

there are several other filesystems that linux can use though...
The Global File System (GFS)
SGI's XFS port to Linux
IBM's JFS port to Linux
Reiserfs (looks like someone needs to fix permissions for this one though)
CODA, a distributed filesystem like AFS
dtfs, a log-structed filesystem under development
Another LFS filesystem

[PakiBlue]

I'm gona check it now!
thanks for ext* help...

[rcgreen]

It may be that your windows swap file was on the partition you converted to
Linux, and now you have no swap. Or maybe there isn't enough free space
on the windows partition.

Just installing linux shouldn't have affected the way windows runs unless
it is a very unusual installation. If your mbr was corrupted, it probably
wouldn't boot at all.

[gore]

Something i didnt see in here, iv heard alot that if you run Dual boot with Windows (2 versions of Windows) you have to use the Windows boot loader, iv never ran a system with two versions of Windows because im not a sadist but anyway, from what iv heard Windows wants its own boot loader loaded, even though it shouldv worked, NOW so no one mistakes what iv said AGAIN i said iv heard that when you have more than one Windows on your PC with another OS, Windows wants its own boot loader.

Now, as for getting your HD back to just Windows, if you had anything on Linux back that up and then, back up EVERYTHING, take it from me iv lost things like 30 times because i was a moron with partitions, so back up everything including your stuf in Windows, then, you can use partition magic like you said, and delete all partitions and reformat, or you can just delete Linux, if you delete it first by accident without removing grub,
fdisk/mbr
has worked for me when i did that usually so you should be ok, just be sure your backed up.