Guest roryks Posted February 2, 2005 Report Share Posted February 2, 2005 I come to you cap in hand. I need help in uninstalling Mandrake. The problem is this: When I installed I partitioned about 5gb for Mandrake and all went swimmingly. Now I want to uninstall, and I did the research (I think) and read that I simply had to insert the installation disk and take it up to the partitioning bit, highlight the windows partition and resize it. Then reboot, or as someone suggested, "back out of the installation" but I wasn't sure how to do this as there is no apparent exit key. So, I followed this advice as best I could - and Windows has not registered the reclaimed space. Say I have a 30gb hard drive: Windows keeps telling me I only have 25gb (20gb used and 5 free) A partitioning tool I loaded tells me my disk is the full 30, but reads that 25gb are used and 5 free. There seems to be 5gb unseen somewhere - or a discrepancy between the hard drive and the hard disk. I humbly ask: Please could you assist. I am not sure I have uninstalled linux correctly, and I cannot seem to reclaim the 5gb. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reb2 Posted February 2, 2005 Report Share Posted February 2, 2005 maybe the partitioning tool is saying it is now an unpartitioned space of 5gb? i personally have never "resized" a partition, just deleted and re placed partitions. so how you would go about resizing i have no idea. but it seems to me you need to create a partition on the 5gb and then format it with the fat32 filesystem (or ntfs if xp 2ooo) windows should recognize the partition once created. as for resizing, i know it can be done, shrinking a partition, but not sure about being able to stretch up in size with windows all ready installed? i am a noobie myself so i dare say someone else will give a better answer regards reb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest roryks Posted February 2, 2005 Report Share Posted February 2, 2005 I think you're on to something. I did try to format the 5gb as FAT32 but the Mandrake partitioning tool wouldn't let me proceed unless I named it something - \ or \usr etc - and I kinda chickened out at that point. Should I name it something and just format it anyway? Whadoido? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmc77 Posted February 2, 2005 Report Share Posted February 2, 2005 (edited) What software are you using to make these partition changes? *Edit* I didn't read thouroughly enough. Have you tried using partition magic from within windows? That has always seemed to work well when I'm trying to make changes for a windows drive. Edited February 2, 2005 by kmc77 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest roryks Posted February 2, 2005 Report Share Posted February 2, 2005 No, I haven't tried using Partition Magic; I got hold of Acronis Partition Manager, and I reckon it is telling me the same thing Partition Magic would: It recognises that I have a 30gig hard drive, but it is telling me that 25gb is used up. Windows is telling me I have a 25gb drive of which only 20 are used up. My Windows system (which is ME, by the way) is not recognising the 5gb I used to install Mandrake, but the Partition Manager is seeing it as 5gb of used space. It must mean it is being used by Mandrake, and I haven't yet successfully reformatted it. My problem is: If I do reformat it as FAT32, I will probably have 5gb of hard drive seen as a second drive - "D" to my original "C", if you will. How do I get it to be part of the original 25? And I am obviously trying to do this without having to go down the whole reinstall Windows route, though I know that looms ever closer... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reb2 Posted February 3, 2005 Report Share Posted February 3, 2005 (edited) well windows me will not recognise anything but microsoft formatted partitions so if, when you installed linux you used "ext2 or ext3 (journaled) or riser or any other" windows me will not see it! get to the mandrake partitioning section and just delete the 5gb partition. don't format it, don't do anything to it, just delete it and then exit. this will remove the 5gb linux partition but how you would go about "stretching the windows partition i have no idea. remove the boot cd and then restart the machine! re-create a 5gb partition (on the un-partitioned space) using your favourite partitioning tool and then see if the tool will allow you to format it fat 32 (if so you will get a 5gb drive "d" in winme). i do not know how to stretch a windows partition! i do know that a windows partition can be shrunk (though i have never done this). if this is not acceptable to you (5gb of backup space is always usefull!) then i have no other things to suggest (that does not mean somebody else doesn't know! so may be worth waiting to see). other than a complete delete of all partitions and start again from scratch with a re-load. by the way, i have always used a second partition for backup purposes so i don't have to re-load everything, just drag the saved files across! (workfiles, favourites, address book, game saves, music etc etc). i currently think the "best" way for people who use m$ products to try linux is by having two hard drives one o/s on each with a "shared partition" and dual boot. one of my friends actually "physically" changes his harddrive for different o/s's he wishes to use! i also back up to cd too just in case the actual drive goes bad. sorry i can not be of any more help regards reb Edited February 3, 2005 by reb2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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