...making Linux just a little more fun!
sugar plum [sugarplum_lana at yahoo.com]
So a friend of mine sends me a couple of hard drives for my birthday telling me one used to be a linux drive and that i will more than likely need to partition it. So i hook it up in my tower and turn the thing on. Here's what I see....
[Linux-bzImage, setup=0x1e00, size=0x16eb71]
initrd /initrd -2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img
[Linux-initrd @ 0xfd45000, 0x19adf9 bytes]
Uncompressing Linux... ok, booting the kernel.
Red Hat nash version 5.0.32 starting
Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while...
Couldn't find device with uuid 'tD0wBg-QBZz-zExm-A6QM-ZbPv-z42w-su5bzz'.
Couldnt find all physical volumes for Volume Group VolGroup00.
Couldn't find device with uuid 'tD0wBg-QBZz-zExm-A6QM-ZbPv-z42w-su5bzz'.
Couldnt find all physical volumes for Volume Group VolGroup00.
Couldn't find device with uuid 'tD0wBg-QBZz-zExm-A6QM-ZbPv-z42w-su5bzz'.
Couldnt find all physical volumes for Volume Group VolGroup00.
Couldn't find device with uuid 'tD0wBg-QBZz-zExm-A6QM-ZbPv-z42w-su5bzz'.
Couldnt find all physical volumes for Volume Group VolGroup00.
Unable to find volumegroup "VolGroup00"
Unable to access resume device (idev/volgroup00/LogVol01)
Mount: could not find file system '/dev/root'
Setuproot: moving idev failed: no such file or directory.
Setuproot: error mounting /proc: no such file or directory.
Setuproot: error mounting /sys: no such file or directory.
Switchroot: mount failed: no such file or directory
Kernel Panic- not syncing: attempted to kill init!
All i want to know is step by step.. how do i make that go away so i
can install Windows XP? *sighs softly*
thanks for your time in advance
Sugar
Rick Moen [rick at linuxmafia.com]
Quoting sugar plum (sugarplum_lana@yahoo.com):
> All I want to know is step by step.. how do I make that go away so I > can install Windows XP? *sighs softly*
1. The very first Google hit on "remove Linux" is https://support.microsoft.com/kb/314458 , "How to Remove Linux and Install Windows XP". Article appears to be sufficient albeit grossly overcomplicated.
2. However, I would think it should suffice to just boot your MS-Windows XP installer from its CD or DVD or whatnot, and tell it to blow away whatever's on the target hard drive. I'm pretty sure that even XP can handle that extremely elementary installation task.
Basically, what you tried to do was boot the hard drive. As the old technical support joke goes, Don't Do That, Then.
Minh Nguyen [nguyenminh2 at gmail.com]
Rick,
[...]
> 2. However, I would think it should suffice to just boot your > MS-Windows XP installer from its CD or DVD or whatnot, and tell it to > blow away whatever's on the target hard drive. I'm pretty sure that > even XP can handle that extremely elementary installation task.
If you're booting the MS-Windows XP installer CD/DVD, the installer program (Setup or whatnot) would (usually/often/always) hiccup if it finds that your master IDE HDD has a partition on it. Setup doesn't care what kind of partition, as long as there's a partition. Then you'd get the infamous BSOD, or your screen would just blank out.
Regards
Minh Van Nguyen
Rick Moen [rick at linuxmafia.com]
Quoting Minh Nguyen (nguyenminh2@gmail.com):
> If you're booting the MS-Windows XP installer CD/DVD, the installer > program (Setup or whatnot) would (usually/often/always) hiccup if it > finds that your master IDE HDD has a partition on it.
I actually checked using an XP installation CD and the ThinkPad T42p test machine in front of me, which has a bunch of Linux swap and ext3 filesystems on it. No such problem seen.
I did not proceed to actually wipe the drive, as I have uses for those filesystems, as yet.
FWIW, in the general case, I'd just keep a live CD around, boot it, and "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdXX bs=512 count=1". Clean, fast, foolproof. But the "I want to install XP" querent wouldn't want to hear that, so I didn't bother to tell him.
Minh Nguyen [nguyenminh2 at gmail.com]
Rick,
[...]
> I actually checked using an XP installation CD and the ThinkPad T42p > test machine in front of me, which has a bunch of Linux swap and ext3 > filesystems on it. No such problem seen.
When I said that Setup would hiccup, I have actually tried to boot the installer CD on a PC with two IDE HDDs and two IDE CD/DVD drives. The booting and installation processes didn't go smoothly, because /dev/hda wasn't a partition-free drive, meaning that there shouldn't be anything on it just like what you'd get when you purchase an IDE HDD. BTW, /dev/hdb wasn't connected to the motherboard when this was happening.
I then proceed to wipe everything on /dev/hda, and then run the installer CD again. This time, no BSOD and the installation went OK.
> I did not proceed to actually wipe the drive, as I have uses for those > filesystems, as yet.
It works on my ThinkPad R40. But I'd need to download extra drivers to accelerate the GUI. I chose to install Slackware 12.0 instead.
> FWIW, in the general case, I'd just keep a live CD around, boot it, and > "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdXX bs=512 count=1". Clean, fast, foolproof.
You're right.
> But the "I want to install XP" querent wouldn't want to hear that, so I > didn't bother to tell him.
Good thinking.
Regards
Minh Van Nguyen
Minh Nguyen [nguyenminh2 at gmail.com]
Sugar,
[...]
> All i want to know is step by step.. how do i make that go away so i can > install Windows XP? *sighs softly* > thanks for your time in advance
A "quick and dirty" way is to get yourself a copy of a Knoppix distribution. Perhaps from Knoppix 5.x onwards, maybe from 3.x onwards would also do the job. Here, I assume that you use Knoppix 5.0.1 or 5.1.1 CD/DVD distribution.
[1] Set up your BIOS to boot a CD/DVD drive first.
[2] Boot up the Knoppix live CD/DVD. This will take a while to load X and get you into KDE, a graphical session under Linux.
[3] Once KDE is ready to use, locate the "K" icon in the bottom-left corner of your screen. This is the menu for KDE, similar to the "Start" menu under Windows XP.
[4] Click on the K menu and locate "System". You need to be patient with live CD/DVD distributions, depending on your system's hardware specifications. Once the "System" menu pops up, click on a program called "QTParted". I think there are two icons for this tool within the "System" submenu:
1. QTParted (create, reorganize and remove partitions) 2. QTParted (QTParted)You can choose either of these two programs.
[5] I assume that you're using IDE HDD(s) and IDE CD/DVD drive(s). Once QTParted is up, you need to familiarize yourself with the "Device" tree on the left side of the program window. If you have two IDE HDDs, then your master hard drive will be /dev/hda (this is also the case if you have only one IDE HDD), and your slave drive will be /dev/hdb. Your IDE CD/DVD drive(s) will be /dev/hdc for the master drive, and /dev/hdd for the slave drive.
[6] Familiarize yourself with /dev/hda and/or /dev/hdb, as the case may be. Note down the drive and/or partition(s) that you want to delete/wipe/format/reformat. Say you want to keep /dev/hda intact, but you want to wipe everything on /dev/hdb. Then on the "Device" tree, click on /dev/hdb. A visual representation of the drive should appear on the right side of your screen. This is similar to what you would get if you have ever format/reformat/defragment drives under Windows XP.
[7] Right click on any partition to get yourself familiar with the options for formatting, resizing or deleting partitions/drives.
[8] In your case, I assume that you want to delete all partitions on /dev/hda. In the "Device" tree, click on /dev/hda. Then right click on a partition and choose "Delete" to wipe it out. This won't actually wipe out the partition, yet, but just an indication that you want to wipe it. Do this for as many times as you have partitions. Once you're happy that all partitions have been marked for deletion, go to File -> Commit. Be cautious here; this will actually wipe out all partitions that you've marked for deletion.
[8] Once all partitions on /dev/hda have been wiped out, reboot your machine. If everything goes well, you should now be able to install/reinstall MS-Windows XP on /dev/hda.
Regards
Minh Van Nguyen