Nyal,
Hi, It sounds like the auto-partitioning got you. At this point
all
may not be lost. It may be that you have a working windows
system, but cannot access it becasue of what happened duing the
install. If you chose to format your windows partitin during the
install, then its gone, if not, then its there, but you will need to
clean things up, and fix your master boot record so it will boot the
windows partition.
If your windows partition is infact wiped out (not just not
bootable), then now is a good time to plan how to partition your
drive!
Some things to consider when partitioning a drive:
1) you can have upto 4 partitions on a drive (without using extended
partitions, using extended partitions is more advanced, and
complicates matters considerably.)
2) With linux on the system you will need atleast one partition for
swapfile, I use the same swap partition for several linux os's,
without problems, but you must have one!
3) If your using a Microsoft Operating system on that disk, put it on
the first partition on the drive (windows is stupid, and doesnt like
being on anything other than the first partition...)
4) Figure out how big you would like each partition to be (think
about future needs, since you will have mucho difficulty changing it
later!) before you fdisk/format/install anything... use a peice of
paper and pencil!!! be very clear on what you want, and understand
what you are doing!
So, as an example, I have a 10 gig drive, I know i will need a lot of
space for windows, and I want 2 other linux systems too, which
means 3 operating systems, and I need 1 swapfile.
So, I have 10 gigs, I want 4 for windows, whch leaves me 6 for
whatever else. I have 128 megs ram, so I want my swap to be
256megs, but maybe I will upgrade my ram and need more swap!
so I will put it as the last partition, and steal some from my 3rd
partition when necessary. It will look something like this:
/dev/hda1 Windows (0g-4g)
/dev/hda2 Slackware (4g-7g)
/dev/hda3 Mandrake 7g-9.75g)
/dev/hda4 Swap 9.75g-10g)
This is probbably the best way to do it, but its not the only way...
You could have more OS's, but it means doing extended partitions,
which is ok, if you know what your doing, but is kinda complicated!
You can also use more than one drive, but it is more complicated
too, you will need a boot loader that can boot another disk as well
as the primary drive/and or, and tricked out lilo config (I had one
that booted 6 OS's from one drive once, and have seen one that
booted about 10 with 2 drives...)
If you want, you could send us a copy of your partitioning scheme
(linux fdisk, or cfdisk should show it just fine) and we could make
suggestions.... Definetly you should make sure your windows
partitnion is really wiped out, if its not, you could save a lot of time
installing by simply fixing your boot loader!
Jamie
On 28 Jan 2001, at 0:06, Nyal wrote:
>
> I'm writing in the hopes that one of the Gurus can give me a hand. I
> just installed RH 6.1 on my Windows 98 box. The install went fine and
> everything was working fine. Unfortunately I wound up deleting 98
> (Gotta have it for work) and wound up with an EXT DOS partition that
> fdisk wont delete (Because it says there are logical drives in the
> partition. Do any of you Gurus know how I can wipe the HD clean? I
> also tried using the Disk Druid in the install program to no avail. I'm
> going to put Linux on a different HD but I'd like to salvage the one.
> Any and all help is most appreciated.
>
> Nyal R Cammack
>
>
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Virtue is its own punishment.
Generated by /usr/games/fortune
Jamie Chamoulos
Internet.Now!
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.efn.org/~jamie
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