All may not be lost. If you can run a floppy version of Linux, or
an older (manual) install, use Linux's fdisk to set the partition
information for that old DOS partition to be fat32 and "active" or
bootable, or whatever they call it, save what you have done, and
reboot. You _could_ get lucky. This should not make things any
worse, anyway.
At 06:27 PM 11/27/2000 +0000, you wrote:
>That partition is gone. You should never have told it to install there.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Sent: Friday, November 24, 2000 6:34 PM
>Subject: [newbie] partition info destruction
>
>
> > Ok, this is what happened...
> >
> > I was running Windows, and bought Linux-Mandrake 7.2.
> > I installed it with the custom option, as i had already installed 7.1 a
> > couple of times. when it got to the point to decide how to install it on
>my
> > harddrive, i chose the option "install to free space on Windows", which i
> > thought would create the necessary partitions, and 'steal' the space from
> > windows. Beforehand i had defragmented windows.
> > when i clicked into the "install to free space on Windows" option, the
> > system froze.(AI could move the mouse, but the system would not respond to
>the
> > mouse or the keyboard navigation of the options... I proceeded to press
> > <ctrl><alt><del>.
> > the system rebooted, but instead of booting normally it asked for me to
> > enter the location of my command.com file, i entred c:\windows\command.com
>but
> > to no avail. When i booted with my win 98 boot disc it told me that it had
> > not found a valid FAT16 or FAT32 partition on my drive, and that i should
> > use fdisk to make one. i used fdisk and it told me that there was the
>windows
> > partition (i could tell because of the size), but that it was a non-DOS
> > partition. I tried using norton disc doctor, but that didn't help because
>it
> > could not see a drive to examine...
> > I desperately need help, because i've got important stuff on the windows
> > partition...
> > I started Lnx-mdk 7.2 setup again, just to see what the partitions looked
> > like etc. but the 'only' option of how to install was to use all the space
> > (ie. no option to use the space that was not being used by windows - win
>does
> > not use all the space on my harddrive; the rest is empty)
> > I know this is not exactly a linux question, but my guess is that some of
> > you will also know something about windows.
> >
> > Thanx a lot...
> >
> > creaktop
> >
> > --
> > Sent through GMX FreeMail - http://www.gmx.net
> >
> >
