Coming back to Win Xp

Please,need a help with partitions

[specter]

Hi everyone,

I tried Linux Mandrake on my PC,now I would come back to Win XP but I'm not able to reinstall it:If I try after the boot it returns to me an error message ("glue parts").I think it depends the fact that the HD hasn't currently any partition suitable for Win Xp.Someone told me to manage the partitions from Linux with fdisk command;someone else told me to use an external partitioning software such as Partition magic or Parted (free) and so on.
Could anyone please tell me the exact procedure and drive me step by step?

Thanks in advance.

Sincerely

[Terabytes]

If your booting from the WinXP CD to do the install, the XP install program will prompt you / allow you to remove the old partition and create a new NTFS partition (or FAT32). Just follow along, when the install asks you what drive you want to install XP on, simply delete the current partion and create a new one. The instructions for deleting the partition are plainly spelled out in the text on that particular screen...

hope that helps you...

[wheel]

Not sure that happens in 100% of cases, I think I've seen something similiar before.

Assuming you are wiping the drive and starting fresh, what I would do is start the reinstall ofMandrake to the point where it asks you about partitioning. Delete all the partitions and save that setup - but don't continue with the install after you've saved the new 'blank' partition.

Then reboot onto your windows install CD and it should find a blank drive.

There's probably a better way of doing this, but I've always found this the easiest.

[specter]

Thanks for the replies guys,

If your booting from the WinXP CD to do the install, the XP install program will prompt you / allow you to remove the old partition and create a new NTFS partition (or FAT32). Just follow along, when the install asks you what drive you want to install XP on, simply delete the current partion and create a new one. The instructions for deleting the partition are plainly spelled out in the text on that particular screen...
hope that helps you...

Not at all.The process stops before this step...

Wheel, I will try it.

Anyway I let you know.

Thanks to both,for the moment.

[specter]

Nothing happens...

[encyclo]

One often-forgotten thing you need to do when going from Linux to Windows: you need to restore the master boot record (MBR) to get rid of lilo/grub. Grab a Windows boot floppy (something like Win98 would do, anything as long as you can boot into MS-DOS). Once at the A:\ prompt, type:

fdisk /mbr

There is no confirmation, but the A:\ prompt should return. Then reboot and install Windows if required. You can use fdisk to delete any partitions too and completely clear the disk for the Windows install.

[specter]

Hi encyclo and thanks you too for the help.

Really,I already entered the fdisk menu previously and I tried to launch the "o" command that is the one to build a DOS partition, as shown in the help menu,but it returns an error of "device or resource busy",so this partition can't be created...