remove linux partitions and repair windows part.

[jredwilly]

I tried creating a dual boot, i had Xp already installed and i followed directions for installing Fedora Core 6 to make a dual boot. I don't know for sure, but I think i didnt partition the drive correctly, because when Fedora asks me to choose an OS to boot from, its the only option, and I know windows should be there. And i cant even get into Fedora because it asks me for a login and password. I remember needing to make a passwd but not login. so i have no clue. I made a boot Cd of knoppix cuz i keep seeing online that can be used to recover my Xp partition, and i hope restore it back to how it was before, so i can start over and still have all my stuff, and settings.

I dont know a thing about linux, and i dont even understand where the commands i see mentioned for fixing this should be run from. Please help, if you can. And be detailed about what i would need to do, and where to go to do it.

Thanks

[kirol]

If the live CD works, issue "sudo sfdisk -l /dev/hda" and post the output. It will tell us what partitions you (still) have and which one is active. Note this assumes you're booting from a primary master IDE disk; the device would be different otherwise.

[jredwilly]

Ok now what do I open, and type that in exactly....lol

Im not sure, and don't wanna screw anything up, its been a long nite let me tell you.

[kirol]

Click on the shell/terminal icon (konsole), then type the command I gave you.
If you're able to access the net from the live CD, you should then be able to cut and paste and post the result here from either firefox or konqueror.

[jredwilly]

Now that I am finally able to connect to this forums Db, I can post this, been trying to but too many people on right now,

Ok, now I figured out how to do that Im pretty sure. I ran it in the "Root" window so...

Running "sudo sfdisk -l /dev/hd" would only show all the things for "-l" the letters with a (-) before them,
so I just ran "sudo sfdisk -l", and the output of that is:

Disk /dev/sda: 9729 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 0+ 12 13- 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 13 9728 9716 78043770 8e Linux LVM
/dev/sda3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sda4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty


I hope thats what I was supposed to do.

[jredwilly]

I haven't been able to figure out how to get online yet, Ive had bigger issues to worry about, I had work on my drive(xp part.) that I need to finish for a class I have tomorrow so I'm screwed if I lose this.

[kirol]

Yeah I couldn't connect to edit my post either; I meant hda instead of just hd.
Anyway, sda means you probably have a SATA disk (or SCSI/USB),
and since the partition table only shows linux entries, I am afraid you might
have destroyed your windows installation while running the fedora installer...

[jredwilly]

i saw something about using QTparttype or something, would that be able to help in anyway?

[jredwilly]

Or would any other bootable disk, like a windows rescue or partition recovery disk work. i know the files should be possible to recover after reformatting, sometimes anyways.

[jredwilly]

Is it possible that the /dev/sda2 is a non-booting windows part, since it is so big

78043770 8e Linux LVM , what is LVM?

cuz i saw in the partition window thingy, i dont know what it is, that the sda2 part. is an unknown fs. and i am running a bootable Super fdisk program, and it says my partitions 1 and 2 overlap

i dont know if thats good or bad either

[kirol]

Can you confirm you have a single SATA disk, possibly of +/- 80GB capacity?
Then the 1st partition might be /boot under fedora, and the rest one big filesystem.
If you went as far as reformatting under fedora, chances are your previous data is gone, sorry...
(LVM probably stands for "logical volume manager", xhich I have never used myself)
If you mount sda1 under Knoppix, can you browse any content?

[jredwilly]

yes it is an 80gb SATA

sooo does that mean theres still a chance

[jredwilly]

what do i need to do to get to the xp os if it is underneath the linux os?

[kirol]

If you mount sda1 under Knoppix, can you browse any content?
You haven't answered that one - if you see something, not only have you overwritten the partition table, but also reformatted the disk and copied new content, so chances of recovery are slim, if any. Good luck, though.

[jredwilly]

i dont know how to mount it under knoppix

[kirol]

There should be an icon on your desktop -just click it.
Otherwise, try "sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/sda1"