Problem with partitioning -- How to format hard drive and reinstall Windows?

[Tim]

On Wed, 2005-11-16 at 21:29 -0800, peter wu wrote:
> I finanlly got ultimate boot cd, and want to possibly
> (1) recover partition

Not something I'd like to advise about, not without being able to play
with the box myself.  On other systems I've done that sort of thing when
I've had a note of the partition boundaries, so I just inputted the same
information in again.  And it really depends on how you've killed it
(stuffed the data within the partitions, stuffed the definition of where
the partitions lay, etc.).

> (2) if (1) fails, reinstall Linux only by formatting Linux
> partitionings

If you wanted to, you could just run the installation discs again, and
choose the option to remove all pre-existing partitions.

> (3) if (2) fails, format the entire hard drive and install Windows XP
> on it.

I would have thought XP had an option, in the install routine, to wipe
out the HDD for a clean install.  But you can always use the Linux fdisk
program (on the rescue disc, at least) to wipe out the partition
information on the drive, so the installer treats the drive as blank.

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