Partition Problems...

[ueriah]

hello. i was hoping someone could give me some advice on how i might be able to get out of a problem that i've created.

i am still very new to LINUX. i use it at home, but a friend of mine performed the actual install, and now i find myself trying to do my first install at the workplace. we had purchased a compaq with a 40 gig hard drive, and i'd been told that when making a duel boot system (i'm using Red Hat 6.1) that it is much easier to install windows first, then add linux.

well, i messed up my partitioning. really bad. i tried to use FDISK to create the partitions for linux (i know, i know... DUH)
and now i can't install linux, my 40 gig drive is only showing like one gig, and i am wondering if there is a way to totally wipe out all partitions on the hard drive so that i can start fresh.

does anyone have any suggestions?

[furrycat]

You could try DOS fdisk with the /x flag. Alternatively, run Linux fdisk and delete all the partitions one after another. Linux fdisk is easy: you just type "d" for delete partition followed by the number of the partition you want to murder. Then it's "w" to write the changes to the disk.

Incidentally, you are not quite correct when you say it is "much easier to install Windows first". More than that, it's essential. Windows WILL NOT install on a partition that isn't the primary master. And it WILL without fail overwrite the MBR once it's installed itself. This isn't really a problem, but you will save yourself a vast amount of hair-tearing-out by installing Windows first.