Removing linux

[Dan7816]

I installed mandrake 8 and it wouldnt boot so I was trying to remove it and I cant fix my hard drive. I put it on my second hard drive which was partitioned in half (30gb drive). I installed mandrake on the first partition. Now when I go into fdisk and switch to my second hard drive, only the second logical drive is shown and when I remove it, it comes back. I cant see the logical drive where mandrake was installed to. How can I get my hard drive unpartitioned and fixed? thanks

[Mr.Shifty]

ill try..

a. why such a short lived linux experince linux is not well in a lame term a pulg and play os linux has achived so much power but with that power came a complex situation
just giving up right out the gate cause it wouldnt boot isnt gona help you in any shape form or fashion
for example your useing 2 hard drive u may have installed lilo wrong u may need to edit your lilo.conf file ther can be a countless number of reasons for failure and just as many solutons

b. what fdisk are we talking about if its microsoft's fdisk theres a mjor isshue there dealing with ext2 and as far as i know ms doesnt even touch ext2fs

if its linux fdisk

are u writeing the partiton table by pressing "w" after the table is done?

if its a whole new system setup u want to do
clean fresh start
first get into linux or boot a linux install cd that will allow text mode and the use of linux fdisk

for fdisk under linux to clean out the partitions

fdisk /dev/hdx (x is your second drive if for some reason it doesnt read as /dev/hdb replace x with its respective letter
begin deleting the partitions from greatest to smallest in number or last partition to the first WRITE THE TABLE u must write the table for the changes to take effect

the only thing that your problem reminds me of is when i was doing a tri boot of 98 95 and nt for various hardware and software reasons
ms fdisk would behave the same way with logical and ntfs delete it would come back

next time ask to solve the problem before embracing the worst case solution one simple question may very well have solved your linux boot problem and you wouldnt be asking THIS question :)

i hope that your not giving up on linux the rewards are far to great and outweigh the complexitys and frustrations all new user's "like my self" endure only to finally be the true master of there system

good luck :)