format hdd back to ntfs .

[caperjack]

hello ,i installed Fedora 8 just to try ,its all right just not for me .install it on a extra tower i have ,i want to go back to winxp,when i boot to xp disk all i get it hit any key to boot to cd ,but after i hit the key ,it say setup is inspection you system !!!! then all i get is black screen with ,is this a Linux issue or just my winxp disk ,any ideas ,thanks

[DimaYasny]

shouldn't be a linux issue. windows is supposed to be able to see the hdd, just not recognize the actual filesystem

[caperjack]

shouldn't be a linux issue. windows is supposed to be able to see the hdd, just not recognize the actual filesystem

thanks .thats what i thought ,it just stays at black screen ,thanks.
Edit ,i just tried a win2000 disk i have and its formating it now ,weird ,i deleted and created a new partition before i formated and tried the xp disk still black screen ,so im formating now with win2000 disk .

[Dortz]

It's because your MBR isn't clean. go ahead and load your xp disk in recovery mode, and use the 'fixmbr' command at the prompt. this will reformat the master boot record, and with a clean install of xp or win2k, you should be fine.

also, it 'might' be the case that your win2k disk comes with a program called 'fdisk' on it. if it does, you should be able to do the same with it, and from the command prompt, type:
"fdisk /mbr" minus the quotes.
This will do the same that 'fixmbr' does. just rewrites the master boot record.

what happened here, is that windows operates on its own bootloader, not a system-wide bootloader. linux does the latter. (grub or lilo traditionally) removing linux smashed your boot partition, but the mbr is still written to direct to that partition. wiping it forces the system to default to the first bootable partition, which will be windows.

[caperjack]

go it with win2000,i deleted partition ,created a new one ,then formatted it and reboot computer to the winxp cd and it recognized then ,thanks