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I have an IBM Thinkpad that had Windows XP installed on it, but it crashed. As a result, I ended up installing Ubuntu on it until I could find my ...
  1. 12-08-2009 #1
    razorsandroses
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    Question How do I format a harddrive with Ubuntu installed on it

    I have an IBM Thinkpad that had Windows XP installed on it, but it crashed. As a result, I ended up installing Ubuntu on it until I could find my Windows XP installations cd.

    Now that I've found it, I'm running into problems installing Windows back on it, so I'm thinking that I need to format the harddrive. But I'm not very experienced in Ubuntu or Linux. Can someone show me how to reformat a harddrive with Ubuntu so that I can install Windows on it?
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  2. 12-08-2009 #2
    oz
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    Welcome to the forums!

    The Parted Magic LiveCD with its graphical user interface makes easy work of formatting drives if you want to try it:

    Parted Magic News

    You can also use it to clear GRUB from the master boot record should you need to do so.
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  3. 12-08-2009 #3
    reed9
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    Just a note, Windows XP has trouble recognizing a harddrive formatted to linux partitions. You'll want to format it to NTFS or FAT32.

    Parted Magic is great as mentioned. Any live CD that included gparted should do.
    GParted partitioning software - Full tutorial
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  4. 12-09-2009 #4
    leutzdave
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    Quote Originally Posted by razorsandroses View Post
    I have an IBM Thinkpad that had Windows XP installed on it, but it crashed. As a result, I ended up installing Ubuntu on it until I could find my Windows XP installations cd.

    Now that I've found it, I'm running into problems installing Windows back on it, so I'm thinking that I need to format the harddrive. But I'm not very experienced in Ubuntu or Linux. Can someone show me how to reformat a harddrive with Ubuntu so that I can install Windows on it?
    Start cfdisk:
    cfdisk
    # It should find your drive at /dev/hda or /dev/sda

    Move the curser to the last partion and press "D"
    Repeat for each linux partition.

    Move the cursor to the bottom onto "Write" and press the enter key. Type "yes" and press the enter key.

    Exit cfdisk:
    Press "q"

    You should now have a clean unpartitioned drive ready for the Windows install.
    Put the Windows install disk into the cdrom drive and reboot.
    The Windows install will allow you to create and format the drive for ntfs.
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