Uninstalling Linux

I Want to uninstall Caldera's OpenLinux, I have multiple partitions because I have windows as well. Instead I want to put in Minix in its place, so I figured to uninstall I would have to delete the partition where Linux is installed then remove all ocurances of the operating system useing explorer.scf (Windows explorer). So I used the delete partition found in the Partition Majic software package. I got the error:

Error: #501

Cross_linked files were found.

So I decided to boot to windows and try to figure out what went wrong. I hered about fdisk so I launched DOS and typed fdisk /? and saw that I could view my current partitons with fdisk /status so I did so and got the following:

Disk Drv Mbytes Free Usage
1 2441 1087 55%
C: 1354

I am confused, is this 1 partiton or 2? And is the linux partiton still there or gone? I do not want to goof around with fdisk till I know what I am doing, i did find a fdisk tutorial and read it, basicaly it took you step by step in the process ofmakeing a primary and extended partition, It still did not explain the status display very well, so I found another fdisk resource which did discribe the status screen for fdisk but it apeared as if they had a difernt version of fdisk. Any sugestions?

Why do you want to use minix? Linux is better.
To kill all your linux partiions use fdisk or cfdisk.

The version of fdisk that comes with Windows
cannot delete or modify the linux partition.

You have to boot into linux, and use fdisk
from there. You can change the partition ID
number to a type that minix can use.

Once you do that, though, LILO may give you
some trouble, because it would still
be there, trying to boot linux from that partition

The usual way to uninstall LILO is to boot windows (or dos)
and type the command FDISK/MBR <enter>
This restores the windows bootloader.

Your minix installer may or may not be able to take it from there.
:cool:

Try Partition Magic.

Ok, I just tryed to boot to linux so I can use fdisk there but it will no longer boot, my kernel gave an error, When I had used Partition Magic to try to delete the linux partition it gave me the error Cross_linked files were found. But after I clicked ok it seemed to continue to delete the partition. So when I got back into windows I did a fdisk /status because I had hered about fdisk before. It gave me

Disk Drv Mbytes Free Usage
1 2441 1087 55%
C: 1354

After reading a bit about fdisk I discovered that disk 1 was indicating I only have one hard drive, and i was useing 55% of it. But under drv on the first line there is no drive letter, could this be linux? I put spaces between the coloms but they just get colapsed here in antionline. But now that I cant boot to linux i am thinking maybe pattition magic did delete the linux partition but how come there is no dive letter on the first line. I luckily had put lilo on a floppy instead of playing with my MBR on the HD so whenever I want linux I insert the floppy and away I go. Therefor I will have no problems with the MBR. I know my HD is a 2 gig HD and when I open up windows explorer and check the properties of the C drive I get:

Used space: 1.24GB
Free space: 81.7MB
Capacity: 1.31GB

help? :(

The portion of the disk that is unseen through explorer is your linux partition. I believe it's ext2? Windows can't see it. If your minix installer has an fdisk utility, I would recommend you use that to partition and format the portion of the disk that windoze is unable to view at present.

Partition magic is nice, but it won't help windows see the partition.

In all reality, the fdisk utility that comes w/ your installer of your *nix environment would be recommended.

Hope this helps, regards.

edit: I'm kinda of working under the assumption that your installed is bootable. If not, create the boot floppies and give it a whirl.

Windows can't see the linux partition, so what
you see from fdisk (in windows) is normal.
It is also normal that Windows does not assign a
drive letter to that part of the disk.
Each partition has an ID byte in the MBR, identifying
it as FAT16, FAT 32, etc. If a partition ID is a non-windows
type it will be invisible. Windows is unaware of it.

If you can still boot linux (from the floppy), then the
linux installation is still intact. Run fdisk from linux
and it will give you full information about all of the
partitions.

As for the "cross-linked files" error, usually, this is a
problem in the file allocation table on a FAT file system
Run scandisk to fix that. If scandisk finds nothing wrong
with your windows partition, you may have a rare
problem in the MBR, ie "illegal" values defining the partitions.
(partitions that don't start and end on cylinder boundaries,
and other wierd stuff)
:cool:

ok this is starting to make sence, Iwindows fdisk will not see the linux partition because it is a difernt file system, but linux's fdisk will see all partitions because it was beter made :)

Ok, linux will not boot now problably because I atempted to delete the linux partition with boot magic, and I problably got the error because I had disk errors, so I ran a full scandisk with automaticaly fix errors. Now when I try to use partition magic to delete partitions it gives me the error Unable to remove linux partitions. The operating system partition to be removed was not found. And I verifyed that by useing the other part of Partition Magic to set up a new linux partition, chooseing to manualy choose the partition I saw one partition formated for FAT 32 and DOS with my windows on it, labled drive C: and then I discovered the rest of my 2Gig HD was labled *: and the status indicated it was free space. So I now know windows is on a partition with 1 354.5MB and 1 289.5MB free, then the second partition is free space, I am guessing that is where linux was, now it is labled free space, it has 1 082.8MB and when I do all the math I get my 2 Gig, so my problem now is how do I put that 2nd partition will all the free space as part of the first partition. I started the LIZZARD (linux install wizard) thart comes with calderas open linux and I got to the select the partitions to use area and had two opetions, one was to install on the entire HD or to manualy choose the partition since the option for pre-prepared partition was not active. So I got the following information

my HD is /dev/hda
/dev/hda4 to /dev/hda2 is not used
/dev/hda1 has Windows and FAT32 file system. It said the size is 1386MB and the start is 1 and end is 344

So I am assuming all that remainder space that is not on the C: drive is /dev/hda4 - /dev/hda2

So if i add the space from hda4 to hda2 i get the remainder of the 2 Gig HD which apears to be 2gig - 1386MB

So I can problably fix my problem by useing this partition utility that comes with caldera, it has an option where i can edit any partition I want and it can see all partitions, much beter then the windows fdisk. I guess it is caldera's fdisk in graphical mode. The questiuon now is, should i modify one of the hda4 - hda2 to start at 345 and take up the remainder space, then select it to be formated with Windows FAT32 filesystem or should I modify hda1 which i am assuming is the priimary partition, to take up the entire HD instead of stoping at 344. I assume the start and stop numbers are sectors or clustors or something?

I am very sorry for asking silly questions, I have found some fdisk tutorials but they did not help much and now I just got Red hat linux 6.0 today with a book teach yourself linux programing in 24 hours so I am itching to get started. My origional plan was to put in minix so I can learn how operating systems work but red hat sounds too fascinateing.

This was hardly a silly question. You had an issue that you didn't understand, you asked a well formed question and got what we hope was good advice. If you have learned something from this, then it wasn't silly, nor was it in vain.

I subscribe to the "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" theory. I think the post was worthwhile as it will help others that may be having a similar issue but feel it's too silly to ask.


Regards.

Do not modify dev/hda1. Attempting to change the size will
destroy your windows system. I would delete dev/hda4 and dev/hda2
and recreate dev/hda2, dev hda3, etc while installing redhat,
or another fat32 partition, if I was making it a pure windows machine.

You have to choose the custom install in redhat, I believe, if you want to set
up for dual boot. You must have a swap partition and one or more
"linux native" partitions.
:cool:

Unfortunately The caldera utility I was talking about that lets me edit partitions does not let me delete them. So I went searching and found a utility called fips. I downloaded its tar archive and unzipped it, I then copyed the fips.exe to my c:\windows\command and remooted to dos mode. I then ran fips, it displayed a partition table and other information, then it gave me the error:

Error: Last cylinder is not free

:(

Is there a way I can fix this, since I cant boot to linux I cant use the linux fdisk or the cfdisk I learned about today.

I just looked up the error about the last cylinder,
http://translate.google.com/translat...DUTF8%26sa%3DN
and here is what it said:

Last cylinder is not free

Last occupied cylinder
As long as the new partition is created after the old one and that it includes the last cylinder, the partition could not be divided if this last cylinder is not completely free. There are probably a hidden file of the image.idx kind or mirorsav.fil in this last cylinder. See Doc..

I don't understand what the image.idx is, I found lots of posts on news groups with a question about the error, the problem was finding one in english, they were mostly spanish frencvh and portugues, but i found another one writen in english,it mentioned changeing the file artributes of some files then run dfrag, but unfoirtunately my computer crashed so I did not get to wrte the files and corosponding artrib switches down,I am going to defrag and see what hapens when I run fips again.

FIPS is a utility that will reduce the size of your
windows partition, to make room for more partitions.
People use it when their system has windows
occupying the whole drive and want to make room
for linux. It doesn't sound like this is what you want,
since you already have free space, and only need to
create the appropriate partitions in that space.

When it tells you that the last cylinder is occupied, it
means that there is a hidden file at the end of the
windows partition that FIPS is unable to relocate,
but this is irrelevant unless you really needed
to go ahead and reduce the size of your Windows
partition.

Go ahead and boot the redhat install CD, and see if it will
create the partitions you need. Take care to choose custom install
and, when you get to the partitioning, leave the windows partition intact
and have LILO include windows as a dual boot option.

If the redhat install program won't delete the old linux partitions
and create new ones, then you may have to do something more
drastic, like nuking the entire MBR and starting over
with a fresh installation of windows, and linux.
:cool:

I realy apritiate all the help.

Things are starting to make sence, Caldera comes with partition magic, so it installed easily, therefor I became invisible to partitions, not knowing a thing about them because caldera took care of it. I learned that fips is for changeing the size of partitions to make room for linux, whereas fdisk can add and delete partitions, I also learned that the linux partition is invisible to windows fdisk because it is a difernt file system. So I found the documentation on how to install redhat at www.redhat.com and started reading, it makes sence. I used rawrite to create a boot image on my floppy, i then inserted the floppy and Cd then rebooted, the redhat instalation screen apeared. There were a few optiopns:

install or upgrade from redhat 2 or something
and expert mode

then it saidthe disk can no longer be used as a resuce disk, so I just chose expert

I started top answer questions till i got to the partitioning screen. It gave me a option to use disk druid or fdisk to partition, it said disk druid might be easyer so i chose disk druid. It had listed my primary partition as hda1, requested 1354MB Actual 1354MB and type was Win95 FAT32, I clicked the add button and it asked for some information, but what do I put there?

I know my HD is a IDE and has 2Gig of space but thats about all I know about it other then the manufacute is pioneer. I seen the part in redhat documentation telling you to find information before you start, I colected a lot of info and am still waiting for a reply from my monitors maufacture with the specks because they dont apear to have a web site, they are digital Equipment Corp.

In the red hat documentation where it shows you how to find system information i found most of it but some I could not find. Im just not sure what to put when i use disk druid to add a partition.

I just found the documentation for disk druid at http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...TITIONING-FILE

It tells me what to type so I shal try that now, once again thank you so much for the help

Ahhh.. Behold the power of the Antionline forums. I wish you well in your adventure into linux. Understanding partitions is definetly not an easy task. It seems like your getting there though. Disk druid was what i used to choose which partitions i wanted to use, but I had to create the partitions before hand with Partition Magic. I would suggest you make sure your windows partition is defragged before you change any partition sizes(if your changing them at all) This will put all of your windows files at the beginning of the partition and should get rid of that last cylinder is occupied error. Well, if you need any other help, just ask. Thats what were here for. :)

Redhat has been installed :)

My only problem now is getting the x windows system working since it boots to mode 3 with text, and when I type startx the screen goes black, I antisipate graphics but I waited less then a munute, maybe I should have waited longer but I did not want to take any chances with damageing my monitor so I turned off the power. I made a boot disk instead of useing lilo. Finaly after many hours of searching I found the specs for my monitor, it turns out Digital Equipment Corp must have merged with compaq or HP, so their home page was dificult to find, anyway the specks are:

Horizontal Sync Rate: 30KHz - 66KHz
Verticle Sync Rate: 50Hz - 1010Hz

So during the instalation process only one monitor made by DEC was in the list and that was not the S/N i have, my serial number is PCXBV-YA it turns out the last two characters did not match :( so I chose to manualy configure the monitor. And in the list available for horizontal sync rates the one I picked was standard VGA @ 60KHz and a small resolution of 640 by 480, i know mine can definately handle 600 by 800 but I did not want to take any chances, the ones with 600 X 800 looked like the frequency was starting to get high. Should I have picked a difernt one? And do you think if i waited a minute or so after typeing startx that it would have worked, I seen a black screen, waitied about 10 secs then turned off the power.

When i tryed the auto probs it detected my graphics adapter ok, but it choose a 8bit depth for my monitor which I think my monitor can handle more, plus when it was probing the screen was flashing on and off, then it did something funny, and then finished the prob. I am not sure if that was an indicator that it failed. I was expecting it to ask me if I saw something.

Sugestions?