HELP!

[Diamante]

I need help guys, your much more knowledgeable about systems than I am. I need a quick walkthrough of how to get out of my situation. I bought 2 computers from a guy, turns out they have lindows on them, I don't know a single thing about that system or how it even works, However i do have a multi user XP that i use for my networking. I need to install it, but don't know how do to a few things.

1. Erase Lindows completely from my system.

2. And Install a fresh XP on a stable system.


Any advise you guys could give me would help me greatly, i don't want to be stuck with something i can't use and thats what i have atm =(.

 

[Flinx]

Erasing stuff:

If you have access to something like a windows 98 emergency boot diskette:

1) Boot to the floppy.
2) fdisk
delete all existing partitions.
3) fdisk /MBR (or if mulitiple drives on one machine.
look up: fdisk /CMBR)
recreates the master boot record.
4) create partitions as required or let XP do it for you.





The loving are the daring!

 

[addiarmadar]

Best to have a bootable copy of winxp here. Use it to trash the existing partition and reformat the drive then resinstall.

F-DISK-Format-Reinstal DO DA!! DO DA!!

 

[Diamante]

don't have access to a floppy of that nature, is there a website i could download something like that to diskette

 

[Flinx]

The XP cd is bootable if you make the CDRom the first boot device.
If the Mobo lets you boot off the CD.

anyway: <A HREF="http://www.bootdisk.com/" target="_new">http://www.bootdisk.com/</A>

Also many of the HDD manufacturers have utilities to format the HDD. Read throught the Hard Disk posts . Plenty of examples.

The loving are the daring!<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Flinx on 08/02/03 06:51 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[pIII_Man]

i would recomend against doing an fdisk /mbr too many things can go wrong and render your drive useless...

fdisk is fine...format is fine...but fdisk /mbr i would not recomend...

3 386DX-25's...12 volts...glue some ln2 and a wicked amount of overclocking and you get a willamantee minus 36 pins, 33.75 million transistors and a couple hundred mhz... 😎

 

[Flinx]

Well I have done it several dozen times without a problem.
Maybe not in this exact combination but...

I recommend doing this because Linux has its own boot loader and may have to get rid of reference to it.

Try managing without the "fdisk /MBR" if you want.

The loving are the daring!<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Flinx on 08/02/03 07:09 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[pIII_Man]

I would fdisk...normally then format...if it does not boot lilo/grub (or whatever linux uses now) then i would leave the MBR alone...i just get very touchy with those kind of things...because there is a very real chance that it could render your drive useless also... i beleive that some linux os's write to a pre MBR space...if you were to rewrite the mbr...this could render your drive useless...

Your call i have little experience with the fdisk /mbr command...but i do know that in certain situations it should not be used...

3 386DX-25's...12 volts...glue some ln2 and a wicked amount of overclocking and you get a willamantee minus 36 pins, 33.75 million transistors and a couple hundred mhz... 😎

 

[Flinx]

Ok, situations where not to use:
1) Insufficient to remove Ontrack or similar
A pre-OS driver to support "large drives" has been installed so a drive greater than 528MB can be used in a machine with an "old" BIOS.

2) A security system that does on-the-fly encryption and decryption of the hard drive may be installed with a pre-OS "driver" loading from the MBR bootstrap code. Such a scheme, being non-standard, has its own special MBR bootstrap code. Such code is typically much more than one sector (512 bytes) and as there is no DOS to interpret the file system, the "driver" is usually stored in the "wasted space" on track one (after the MBR) I referred to earlier. (A dual-boot MBR, e.g., OS/2, is another example that might fit into this category.)

3) Various viruses

----------------------------
Let's not scare the man though. It is generally harmless and will probably be needed to get rid of the Linux boot loader.

The loving are the daring!<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Flinx on 08/02/03 07:30 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[pIII_Man]

i am not trying to scare the man but i do beleive that certain linux loaders are initialised before the bootstrap...

3 386DX-25's...12 volts...glue some ln2 and a wicked amount of overclocking and you get a willamantee minus 36 pins, 33.75 million transistors and a couple hundred mhz... 😎

 

[pIII_Man]

this is a safer way IMO

Boot from a windows xp cd...enter the repair console...use the "fixmbr" command then reboot to a floppy...Fdisk and remove the partition...create a new primary partition (make sure it is set as active)...restart...then format...

3 386DX-25's...12 volts...glue some ln2 and a wicked amount of overclocking and you get a willamantee minus 36 pins, 33.75 million transistors and a couple hundred mhz... 😎

 

[jihiggs]

but if he wants to install windows he doesnt need those linux components. i have no idea about lindows pcs, are they just regular emachine type comps or are they some proprietary thing to run with lindows. i thought they were very low end hence having lindows on them

wpdclan.com cs game server - 69.12.5.119:27015

 

[pIII_Man]

i relise that but i beleive if it is a pre bootstrap os loader then it could render the drive useless...

<A HREF="http://www.cknow.com/vtutor/vtfdiskmbr.htm" target="_new">info</A>

3 386DX-25's...12 volts...glue some ln2 and a wicked amount of overclocking and you get a willamantee minus 36 pins, 33.75 million transistors and a couple hundred mhz... 😎

 

[Crashman]

This looks like the discussion is getting a bit too technical. Easiest thing to do would be:

Set BIOS to boot off CD first, the Hard drive, if it's not already set that way.

Insert the Windows XP CD

When you're prompted to "hit any key to boot from the CD", do so

XP setup will start. It will take a while to load a bunch of files to RAM, then it will ask you if you want to do a new installation, etc. Easy to follow prompts, you'll understand them.

When it asked you what partition you want to use, I'd delete each of them, then make a new one. If you mess around in that command screen, you'll figure it out.

When it asks if you want to format with NTFS or FAT32, consider the fact that FAT32 is accessable with a DOS boot disk but NTFS isn't. Then decide whether you want or need that feature, and go from there.

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