I have a dual boot XP/SuSE notebook. It is running out of HD space and I want to get rid of the Linux partition, since I have Linux running on another two other notebooks anyway (I have a lot of old laptops lying around!). I think completely removing Linux and grub is beyond my very limited abilities. But I was hoping to shrink the Linux partition down to the bare minimum. I was thinking of using one of those live CD partitioners but I'm a bit nervous about wrecking everything. Its actually my girlfriend's computer. Anyone wanna help me out?
hi do you use gparted or qparted if so try to resize the linux partition but another way to do it is to use the windows installation cd to wipe the partition or use ubcd hdd tools section to wipe the partition and install bootmanager i will be online later you can pm me or drop a line if you plan to reseize the partition keep in mind that you will have to clear grub and install windows mbr hope it helps peace raysun
norton partition magic, or paragon partition manger can both be installed on windows and you can modify the partitions easily from the gui. after you apply the changes your computer reboots and it automatically re sizes the partitions and safely moves the data accordingly.
Thanks guys. I aim to try this weekend. I was planning to use gparted or some other live CD linux thing, but i didn't know about the norton or paragon options. I'm trying to avoid anything that requires messing with grub and mbr's, that sounds like something i can get wrong and mess up the computer bad. It is pretty obvious which partition is which when you run these things?
its pretty straight forward, and far easier than your other options, you almost cant screw it up. you should be able to just delete the linux partition and expand your xp partition with a few clicks... atleast thats what worked for me when i removed fedora core 4 from my laptop. i was able to find a small screenshot of the paragon software...
best way is to just stick the xp disk in the drive and do repair then remove the linux partition with paragon like the poster above said by repairing the xp install it will overwrite grub and only allow access to xp
So I had a look at paragon, it was pretty cool but i wanted to try a free option so i went with partition magic. shrunk the linux partitions down, which created lots of unallocated space. but i couldn't make my existing NTFS partition bigger, I had to reformat the unallocated space as NTFS (now 'sda8') which shows up as an E drive. So pretty good, but I would have rather had the new space added to the existing, original NTFS partition. Anybody have any idea where I went wrong?
From experience, Gparted is better and more dependable than Qt-parted. If you have Windows installed, you can delete the Linux partition through Windows. Note, I don't think Windows will have a resize option. - Right-click the Start button, click Explore. - An Explorer window will open. Look for the C:\ drive on the left pane. - Right-click the C:\ drive, click Manage (or Manage Disk, something like that). - The disk manager application will open. Select your disk and look at the partitions for the partition you want to edit. Highlight it and you should have an option to delete. - Delete the partitions not labeled with a letter and then create a new partition with the free space. Be careful not to delete the partitions that you need for Windows. - Reboot/Restart the computer.
you should be doing the partitioning from within windows, pm me and i can provide you with paragon or norton free of cost. im pretty certain you will be able to completely remove your linux partition, and add all of the free space back to your existing windows partition.
like I said - stick the xp disk in - do a repair installation windows is totally oblivious to grub and will rewrite the boot loader with a windows one it will leave out the the linux partition then when you boot into windows just load up a partition manager and delete the linux partition and reformat it to NTFS
If you join the free space to an existing NTFS, make sure you defrag before you modify stuff. Then, it's a good idea to defrag after. Why can't Microsoft just release a driver to handle ext2/3 and reiserfs? lol
It makes me sad in the pants when people use the words "Linux" and "remove" in the same sentence. Windows is the one recognizing Linux and telling you it has to be deleted for it to install right. If you do your homework, you will find out Windows takes all Mac and Linux distros and tells you it's wasted space or unrecognized. Your best bet, considering the GRUB loader is very easy, is to use the grub loader and put windows on that also. Why anyone would want to do something that is considered failure is beyond me, but the grub loader is better. If you had a 200 gig hard drive and only had linux on it, and resized the partition of linux to 3 gigs and had your 197 left, windows will always tell you to delete it or it can't install. Grab a livecd partitioner. At least you have an operating system to install to make it work.
Because when you charge $100-$300 for a system incapable of handling the simplest of tasks without erroring, and your company makes billions from the idiots who buy it, you would do the same. Don't forget the ultra-crash-a-lot super erroring business editions that cost up to 5 grand
