Having had problems with 11.4 Gnome, I’m reduced to dos, I am looking for information on command prompt so I can format my Gnome hard drive to put windows on it, I am not running away from Suse, merely installing it as a second rather then first os, please could someone point me in the direction of command prompt information, it could save me lots of money. Thanks for your time!
Having had problems with 11.4 Gnome, I’m reduced to dos, I am looking for information on command prompt so I can format my Gnome hard drive to put windows on it, I am not running away from Suse, merely installing it as a second rather then first os, please could someone point me in the direction of command prompt information, it could save me lots of money. Thanks for your time!
So, to install Windows, it often needs to be the first partition on the hard drive, the MBR is loaded with Windows booting code and the Windows boot partition will be set active for booting. Most often, you need to boot from a Windows boot disk and if no previous Windows version exists, this needs to be a full copy as opposed to an upgrade copy. Windows 7 seems to create two primary partitions on a new install (when compared to an upgrade of an existing Windows copy), a small one to boot from and a large one to run Windows from. If you do buy an upgrade copy of Windows Vista or Windows 7, you can install it twice. Once, without any registration number and do a clean install and then the second an upgrade of the first install, to allow the usage of a upgrade copy of Windows. Unless you can install Windows to a different hard drive than exist with openSUSE, you will need to remove openSUSE, at least at the start of the disk and attempt to limit the Windows partition size, to leave room for openSUSE. Though it is possible to reduce the Windows partition size, some real thought needs to be put into the size of the Windows partition(s). Here is some more info to think about:
Each hard drive can have up to four PRIMARY partitions, any of which could be marked active and bootable. No matter what you might hear, only one of the first four primary partitions can be booted from. That means you can boot from Primary partitions 1, 2, 3 or 4 and that is all. In order to boot openSUSE, you must load openSUSE and the grub boot loader into one of the first four partitions. Or, your second choice is to load the grub boot loader into the MBR (Master Boot Record) at the start of the disk. The MBR can be blank, like a new disk, it can contain a Windows partition booting code or generic booting code to boot the active partition 1, 2, 3, or 4. Or, as stated before, it can contain the grub boot loader. Why load grub into the MBR then? You do this so that you can “boot” openSUSE from a logical partition, numbered 5 or higher, which is not normally possible. In order to have more than four partitions, one of them (and only one can be assigned as extended) must be a extended partition. It is called an Extended Primary Partition, a container partition, it can be any one of the first four and it can contain one or more logical partitions within. Anytime you see partition numbers 5, 6 or higher for instance, they can only occur inside of the one and only Extended Primary partition you could have.
What does openSUSE want as far as partitions? It needs at minimum a SWAP partition and a “/” partition where all of your software is loaded. Further, it is recommended you create a separate /home partition, which makes it easier to upgrade or reload openSUSE without losing all of your settings. So, that is three more partitions you must add to what you have now. What must you do to load and boot openSUSE from an external hard drive? Number one, you must be able to select your external hard drive as the boot drive in your BIOS setup. Number two, you need to make sure that the external hard drive, perhaps /dev/sdb, is listed as the first hard drive in your grub device.map file and listed as drive hd0. I always suggest that you do not load grub into the MBR, but rather into the openSUSE “/” root primary partition which means a primary number of 1, 2, 3 or 4. If number one is used, then that will be out. You will mark the openSUSE partition as active for booting and finally you must load generic booting code into the MBR so that it will boot the openSUSE partition. I suggest a partition like this with just one hard drive:
- /dev/sda, Load MBR with generic booting code
- /dev/sda1, Small Primary Windows 7 boot partition, which was marked active for booting
- /dev/sda2, Primary NTFS Partition for Windows
- /dev/sda3, Primary EXT4 “/” openSUSE Partition Marked Active for booting (~60 GB)
- /dev/sda4, Primary Extended Partition (To contain the rest of SuSE)
- /dev/sda5, Logical SWAP (4 GB)
- /dev/sda6, Logical EXT4 “/home” Your main home directory (Rest of the disk)
Here is some information about installing the Windows service pack, best done before you install openSUSE:
openSUSE Dual Booting with Windows 7 AND Loading Service Pack 1 for Windows 7
Thank You,
My hard drive is full, therefore I can not install Windows, os does not run, that is the reason I wish to format in dos, I wish to empty the hard drive. Thanks!
I wish I had a Flux Capacitor, but also the car.
Does anyone know how to format in dos?
My hard drive is full, therefore I can not install Windows, os does not run, that is the reason I wish to format in dos, I wish to empty the hard drive. Thanks!
I wish I had a Flux Capacitor, but also the car.
If you gave us a copy of the fdisk command, perhaps we can help though a full disk is hard to over come without deleting something:
su -
password:
fdisk -l
As for the Flux Capacitor moniker, post 4000+ message here in the openSUSE forum and you to can get the title, but so far no real Flux Capacitor has appeared. lol!
Thank You,
Does anyone know how to format in dos?
su -
yast
system
partitioner
Select the partition in question and pick edit. In the edit screen you can select to format it. Then you must select OK to commit your selections. Normally, its best to work on Partitions from an openSUSE LiveCD boot disk as formatting a mounted partition may leave with nothing at all.
Thank You,
On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 22:06:02 +0000, PastyPete wrote:
> Does anyone know how to format in dos?
If you want to make a FAT filesystem, you use the mkfs.vfat program, but
I suspect this won’t accomplish what you’re trying to do, which is erase
the hard drive (so it seems). Making a DOS filesystem won’t erase the
hard drive, it’ll create a filesystem.
You probably want to use fdisk to delete the partitions on the drive and
then install Windows, then install openSUSE.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
Boot from a linux live CD.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda count=1
After that, your hard drive will look to install software as if it is factory new. It won’t even have a partition table yet.
To install windows, you don’t really need DOS or fdisk. In fact, fdisk is long obsolete tool and I wouldn’t recommend it nowadays.
Even Win2000 didn’t recognize disks larger than 136GB by default (48-bit LBA adressing), so I doubt DOS would.
Windows installer includes its own partitioning software.
Run over to Distrowatch and grab a copy of Parted Magic.
DistroWatch.com: Parted Magic
You can do just about anything you might need to on a hard disk!
You should be able to move the Linux Partition, install Windows,
Then move your data to the Windows partition
It’s really simple Just boot the live CD and go to work.
As sobrus said. Stick your Windows disc in the optical drive and reboot. Windows will wipe everything on the HD. There is an option to Partition the HD fairly early into the install.
Windows should ideally be on the first partition so that when you install a second OS it doesn’t overwrite the MBR. As Windows would do if installed second.
On 11/29/2011 07:46 PM, dened wrote:
> Stick your Windows disc in the optical drive and reboot.
> Windows will wipe everything on the HD.
really?? i’ve been told that Windows can’t even see a Linux partition,
much less “wipe” it off the drive…
–
DD http://tinyurl.com/DD-Caveat
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobiles” of operating systems!
Windows can create a fresh partition table.
On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:46:18 +0000, DenverD wrote:
> On 11/29/2011 07:46 PM, dened wrote:
>> Stick your Windows disc in the optical drive and reboot.
>> Windows will wipe everything on the HD.
>
> really?? i’ve been told that Windows can’t even see a Linux partition,
> much less “wipe” it off the drive…
Windows certainly can see other partitions - whether or not it can read
them is another matter, but a non-broken partition table can be read by
anything that can read a partition table.
A broken partition table, though, can usually not be modified by
anything. I had an incident a few years ago with a partition table
that got corrupted so that the ending sector was before the starting
sector - and nothing I tried at the time would touch it, short of a low-
level disk editor.
Fortunately, I had one of those available.
Unfortunately, the system was a server system with a Compaq RAID
controller involved, and the tool I had didn’t have the necessary brains
to access the array. Don’t remember any more how we fixed it (I probably
built a custom Linux boot diskette with the cpqraid driver on it).
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
> Windows can create a fresh partition table.
ok…i admit i know little about that system…
–
DD
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobiles” of operating systems!
On 2011-11-29 20:46, DenverD wrote:
> On 11/29/2011 07:46 PM, dened wrote:
>> Stick your Windows disc in the optical drive and reboot.
>> Windows will wipe everything on the HD.
>
> really?? i’ve been told that Windows can’t even see a Linux partition, much
> less “wipe” it off the drive…
Yes, it can see that there is a partition there. It doesn’t show in the
filemanager, it thinks it is not formatted, so the “disk” does not appear
there. But it can certainly format it, destroying the data.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
Any software with access to the bare metal can create a fresh partition table. Even DOS. Even Linux. 
On 11/30/2011 01:06 AM, ken yap wrote:
>
> Any software with access to the bare metal can create a fresh partition
> table. Even DOS. Even Linux. 
i was just remembering the time i sold a machine to a guy with an
Windows XP install disk…i wiped the drive and left it one big ext3
(maybe 2, this was four or five years ago) … and the next day called
all mad because his Windows install reported the drive was damaged (or
corrupt, or something–it was reporting in a non-english lingo) and
refused to install, no matter what he tried…
i went over (taking a Knoppix CD, just in case) and looked at
it…Knoppix booted right up and showed hda ready and willing to rock
and roll…
so, scratching my head i reformatted the drive as FAT32 (or something)
and immediately the expensive (like $300 off the shelf) Windows install
disk “could see” and liked the drive…
so. i concluded it was still the same as in the late '90s when Windows
refused to see, touch or in any way interact or change/remove any OS/2
partition … but, i’m not disputing anyone here…if you say so, i
will believe it is possible to use DOS or Windows to remove . . . but,
they don’t (didn’t?) make that capability intuitively obvious to the
casual users with a very expensive disk in his hands…
–
DD
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobiles” of operating systems!
On 2011-11-30 15:07, DenverD wrote:
> On 11/30/2011 01:06 AM, ken yap wrote:
>>
>> Any software with access to the bare metal can create a fresh partition
>> table. Even DOS. Even Linux.
>
> i was just remembering the time i sold a machine to a guy with an Windows
> XP install disk…i wiped the drive and left it one big ext3 (maybe 2, this
> was four or five years ago) … and the next day called all mad because
> his Windows install reported the drive was damaged (or corrupt, or
> something–it was reporting in a non-english lingo) and refused to install,
> no matter what he tried…
Weird.
> i went over (taking a Knoppix CD, just in case) and looked at it…Knoppix
> booted right up and showed hda ready and willing to rock and roll…
>
> so, scratching my head i reformatted the drive as FAT32 (or something) and
> immediately the expensive (like $300 off the shelf) Windows install disk
> “could see” and liked the drive…
Silly windows
> so. i concluded it was still the same as in the late '90s when Windows
> refused to see, touch or in any way interact or change/remove any OS/2
> partition … but, i’m not disputing anyone here…if you say so, i
> will believe it is possible to use DOS or Windows to remove . . . but, they
> don’t (didn’t?) make that capability intuitively obvious to the casual
> users with a very expensive disk in his hands…
I don’t know, but I know histories of people with Linux wiped out happily
by Windows initializing the “unknown disk”. It involves repartitioning it
(to change the partition ID) and formatting, but I think a modern Windows
can do that. Modern by 8 years or more, perhaps. Dunno.
Maybe there are Windows versions out there that refuse to touch other
systems “automatically”, which is the correct thing to do, IMO. Clueless
users would just wipe other systems by accident with a single click.
Then I have seen many weird things with Windows, so… anything is possible.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
Am 30.11.2011 15:07, schrieb DenverD:
> i was just remembering the time i sold a machine to a guy with an
> Windows XP install disk…i wiped the drive and left it one big ext3
> (maybe 2, this was four or five years ago) … and the next day called
> all mad because his Windows install reported the drive was damaged (or
> corrupt, or something–it was reporting in a non-english lingo) and
> refused to install, no matter what he tried…
>
With XP this should have never be a problem. I guess the person who did
it tried to reuse the existing partitions when something like that can
happen and he simply overlooked that there is also an option to simply
wipe the complete hard disk whatever is on it.
Still it can be he ran into some installer bug. I remember in the early
NT days we always used to have a floppy disk with a basic ms dos with
fdisk and format on it just in case the installer fails which gave us
the possibility to simply boot from it and make every HD clean.
(I had the “pleasure” for over a decade - long ago - to program on and
for windows in my professional life, back in that time developers were
also expected to be able to setup there own and the testing machines
with windows and also the machines at the customers).
–
PC: oS 11.4 (dual boot 12.1) 64 bit | Intel Core i7-2600@3.40GHz | KDE
4.6.0 | GeForce GT 420 | 16GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.7.3 |
nVidia ION | 3GB Ram