Martin from Dublin

Hi all,
Hope you can help me here. A while ago, after great difficulty, I installed Debian Sarge into an empty 6 Gig partition on my 'C' drive. After a lot a work, I got it up on the screen running but was disappointed with it, so I've hardly used it since. Now, I want to use the partition for something else, namely a extra copy of XP (yes, I know some people won't be happy to hear that but I use both Linux and Windows) but when I go to delete the partition from the XP boot-up disk I'm warned that this is the 'active' partition and that after removal, booting from the hard drive might not be possible unless XP is fully installed.

Here's my dilemia, I need to remove Sarge but Partition Magic can't do it beacuse it's the 'active' partition and I'm worried that if the install of the extra XP goes wrong I'll be left with an unbootable PC. I do have my Linux bootloader copied onto a floppy for emergencies and that floppy still works but I'd really apppreciate some advice before I go ahead. For the record, I want an extra XP as my USB devices are conflicting with each other in the current XP install making it difficult to add additional devices, most importantly, a Walkman-Phone I've just bought, so I want a 'bare-bones' version to use for that purpose, plus it would be handy to have.

Can anyone help me out?

Thanks,

Martin


PS: Anyone know when installing XP, do you get to choose the file type? That is, NTFS or FAT32?

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sether

Since I do not provide technical support Microsoft products, I am going to give you the Linux answer . So if you have an install of Linux on another partition or if you have a Linux live CD, you can safely delete the 6 GB partition which Debian currently resides on. Use either /sbin/fdisk or /sbin/cfdisk (the "easier" one) to manage partitions.

When you say "C: drive" I am not sure what you mean. Is this /dev/hda? If so, execute /sbin/fdisk /dev/hda or /sbin/cfdisk /dev/hda. You *must* specify the device, otherwise it won't know which disk to manage.

Now for my "use at your own risk" Windows advice. As far as I know, it's fine to let the Windows installer delete the 6 GB Debian partition. And you can only use FAT32 if you create a FAT32 partition before running the installer. Otherwise, NTFS is the default.

Remember to backup all data before modifying your partition table.