Removing REDHAT 8 from triple Boot. . .

S

s0ldier93

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 3, 2002
Messages
169
Hello all-

I have a laptop (main machine) that I am using for my IT career change. It currently has XP Pro, MS Server 2003, and Red Hat 8 Installed on it. I goal is now to remove Red Hat 8, mostly due to it not booting up for my shell scripting class.

The hard drive is partitioned into 3 parts with one OS on each. I considered just going to Windows and reformatting the Linux partition, but I know just enough to fear doing that. Mostly because of the nice blue Red Hat screen that asks if I want to boot Linux or Dos.

Is there a good method for me to remove or replace the Linux installation on that partition that will not cause the rest of my laptop to die or otherwise not boot.? I'd like to replace my broken Red Hat with another version of Linux for my class.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
 
Run fixmbr from the windows cd. Well, seeing as you have two Windows, I think you would use the cd belonging to the most recently installed one... only one of them has a menu right?
 
Boot to the recovery console from the WinXP CD, then run fixboot and fixmbr.

Both OSs should still be in the boot menu. Neither of the above commands affect boot.ini. It's trickier to fix a triple boot involving Vista, but XP and Server 2003 should be easy.
 
Wow. That was incredibly easy. I actually though I did something wrong at first. Thank you again.
 
If you were going to replace Red Hat with another distro, when you install your bootloader (GRUB) in the new distro it will automatically overwrite the MBR data that Red Hat gave you and put the new boot entries in place. It would eliminate the fixmbr stuff, although that is a necessary step if you want to reclaim the HDD space in Windows.
 
Well, I just couldn't leave it alone and just use my LiveCD's for class. I attempted to load SimplyMEPIS from it's LiveCD to that Linux partition. As careful as I was I missed that "Use entire Hard drive" option. It got up to 4% formated before I noticed what I'd done. I spent most of last night searching here and online for UnFormat utilities. Not being able to boot from the computer makes it even more fun. NTFS add to that. At this point (and becaue I back up certian things every once in a while) I'd be happy just reclaiming a few specific folders.
 
Manually editing your partition table is always the best option ;)

You're trying to recover some of the stuff on that drive - have you tried loading up a LiveCD (one with NTFS read/write out of the box, like Ubuntu Feisty on Knoppix) and mounting your Windows drive? You may be able to see some remaining data, and you should then be able to copy/paste over to some sort of backup media (external HDD or DVDs). Not sure exactly how the reformat process works or how it will affect recovery attempts, but this is one technique that you could try.
 
He has 1-3 new partitions now, depending on how MEPIS repartitioned the drive.

To recover his old data he needs to partition it the way it was, then he can use something like EasyRecovery to copy data off.
 
Boomslang & pxc

When my classes started I used Gparted LiveCD to create the 3 partitions. I tried Gparted last night. It show all 3 partitions, but in the wrong order. It also looked as if they only had a few hundred MB each stored in them. With XP in the first and Server 2003 in the second, I’m sure that wasn’t right.

Booted up with the NimbleX Live CD. It sees two partitions but is not showing any information in either.

19 May:
-As suggested I booted up in Ubuntu to try retrieving anything. Those two partitions are the correct sizes. When trying to access the is get this error:
Error: device /dev/hda3 is not removable
Error: could not execute pmount

-Next try will be Knoppix, and find EasyRecovery
BTW, Since starting my Linux class I’ve gathered over 20 LiveCD’s.
 
19 May:
Knoppix shows my XP partion 42 of 44.4GB empty. Also, there is a "lost+found" folder that "don't have enough permissions" for.
 
19 May:

Purchased EasyRecovery. Attempted to create a boot disk and it was actually looking for a floppy drive. . . . . nice. I MMC'd a change to make the USB drive the A drive. No joy trying to boot it. I put those files on a CD and tried the same with no luck.

My next step may be trying to reinstall XP on the previous server 2003 partition (the 9GB and second partition), load the program there, then run the unformat utility from there.
 
Easy Recover Personal is working well so far as I am getting (slowly but thankfully) the files Off of the formated section. The sizes of each partition are still out of order (?) And I am working on making the largest one (45GB where XP should have been) accessible. Though I'm not complaining, I don't know how the information I am getting got to the 9GB partition.
 
Well, EasyRecovery Personal is well work the money in my opinion. I've been recovering files that I deleted long ago, along with most of what I originally wanted. Once I find my Outlook.pst file I'm done. I don't think I can look at the screen much longer.
 
$49.00. I don't think I'll be able to recover Outlook.pst. But it has otherwise found EVRYTIHNG else on the drive. By everything I mean thing I deleted last year and further.

On that note I'll ask this, where does Outlook 2003 put Calender information? Since I have never backed it up since upgrading from Outlook XP (I know :( ) I figured the info might be in it's natural state somewhere. This is the last thing I'm searching for as my calender goes back to 2001.
 
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