Ed Tharp wrote: > the Original post here had a question about removing linux from the drive, > some one else said "format /mbr", some one else corrected it to fdisk /mbr > but stated it would "fix anything" I stated that "anything was a big order" > and suggested that it seemed to me to replace the MBR to the state of last > winders install. that was corrected to explain that it puts it to a state to > only read M$ partitions, and creates a new MBR from the M$ partitions. DOS FDISK /MBR writes a brand new boot sector, nothing more, nothing less. It doesn't know anything about anything other than writing a new boot sector. The new boot sector on subsequent boots will shift control to the active partition by loading that partition's boot sector, nothing more, nothing less. It knows nothing about any operating systems or file systems, only shifting control to a boot sector from an active partition. That active partition can be IBM Boot Manager or Linux or DOS or OS/2 or any other partition entry in the master partition table that has a standard 512 byte format boot sector. If you do DOS FDISK /MBR and /dev/hda2 is an active partition with LILO properly installed, then LILO is what you will see as soon as POST is complete. If LILO and Linux are on /dev/hda2 and removal of same is required, you cannot do it with DOS FDISK, which will refuse to remove a non-DOS partition. To remove Linux from a partition, you'll need to use some other tool, like Linux FDISK, Partition Magic, PTEDIT, DFSee or a number of other tools. An easy way using a DOS boot and free tools would be PTEDIT to change the type from 83h to 06h or 0Bh, after which DOS FDISK will happily delete it, or DOS FORMAT will happily overwrite the remaining Linux content. -- "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin
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