[GazmanAus]

First of all, Merry Christmas from Australia.

Secondly, my question:

I have a dual boot with WinXP/Mandrake on my C drive. Naturally, LILO acts as my boot manager. What I want to do is blow away the Mandrake partition and just have WinXP on the drive. I'm scared that if I do that though, LILO will disappear and leave me unable to boot into WinXP. WinXP is on NTFS while Mandrake sits on it's native file system.

So what is the best way to get rid of Mandrake and leave me with a normal WinXP boot sequence? I have PartitionMagic and normally not as stupid with computers as this question makes me sound.

Thanks for any help you can give.

[Jiggy]

im in the same boat my lad, im just going to go the way of the zero fill, but ill try partition magic first. ill post back and let you know, from what ive been told its much better to back up whats wanted then zero fill.

[GazmanAus]

Yeah, a complete format would do it. I've found instructions on how to remove LILO through a command-line on another site so I might try that and then use PartitionMagic to blow the Linux partition, if WinXP's boot.ini will still work. If not, then maybe a few fdisk /mbr might help, and if that doesn't, it's zero-time for me.

I was just hoping for a quick and easy way.

[lilmoonee]

was in a jam this weekend too involving XP and Mandrake. i was afraid of deleteing Mandrake becaue i thought that i would render XP useless. guess what...deleting the linux partitions will remove LILO and XP will boot beautifuly. This will work if LILO is in the MBR or the 1st boot partition.

[pvc9]

Win XP comes with an easy/useful GUI tool Disk Management to manage the disk partitions. Run Disk Management and delete the Linux partitions. Next, you can execute fixmbr or fdisk /mbr to fix/repair the MBR. No need to format or try the zero fill method.

To run Disk Management -

Start->Run->diskmgmt.msc [enter]

To know more about the Disk Management utility check this -

HOW TO: Use Disk Management to Configure Basic Disks in Windows XP

Check the How to Delete a Partition or Logical Drive.

To know more about fixmbr check this -

Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console

FIXMBR

fixmbr device name

Use this command to repair the master boot record (MBR) of the boot partition. In the command syntax, device name is an optional device name that specifies the device that needs a new MBR. Use this command if a virus has damaged the MBR and Windows cannot start.

WARNING: This command can damage your partition tables if a virus is present or a hardware problem exists. Using this command can result in inaccessible partitions. Microsoft recommends that you run antivirus software before you use this command.

You can obtain the device name from the output of the map command. If you do not specify a device name, the MBR of the boot device is repaired, for example:

fixmbr \device\harddisk2

If FIXMBR detects an invalid or non-standard partition table signature, FIXMBR prompts you for permission before rewriting the MBR. FIXMBR is supported only on x86-based computers.

Though I've never used fixmbr, fdisk /mbr has worked for me many times!

You shouldnt have any problems if you follow what I've posted! If you need more info, feel free to ask!

[GazmanAus]

Thanks for the info, lilmoonee and pvc9.

Just one quick (I hope) question: How can I determine if LILO is in the MBR or first partition?

[pvc9]

Boot to Mandrake Linux. Open a Shell and view the contents of this file /etc/lilo.conf using a text editor. If you see a line -

boot=/dev/hda - LILO is installed in the MBR.

BTW, found this link, it should help -

How to Remove the Linux LILO Boot Manager

[lynch]

Why are all you guys dumpin' Mandrake?
lynch

[pvc9]

Originally posted by lynch:
Why are all you guys dumpin' Mandrake?
lynch

Awe!

[GazmanAus]

You guys are great! Some excellent ideas to try.

As for dumping Mandrake, well not really. I still think it's great, but with a crappy softmodem installed, it's impossible to connect to WWW. Also I got a lead on an alpha on a new MS OS (nothing more said on that due to board policy) which I want to try.

[pvc9]

Ok!

Just update after all the trials!