Hi, I had a really old computer which I previously had windows 98 installed. Then I mistakenly erased alot of files and basically windows couldn't even start up. So I manually removed the whole os from the dos prompt. and now i want to install linux. except i'm having problems with it because so one told me i need to reformat my hard drive. i have no idea on how to do this. any help would be great. thanks, anna

Ok... what distribution of linux are you using and does it come on a CD.

linux, i'm impressed, you must be a power user. ok... step 1) get a dos boot disk from a working computer (I know you have one since you posted this) step 2) once booted go to you disk drive (ie. c:\) and type ... format c:\ step 3) type 'y' for the 'i am sure' prompt hope it helps, .:AlphaOne:.

what a joke, lmao. Just reinstall Win98SE. You're supposed to delete all your partitions, not reformat if you're installing linux! - W0rm - http://dos.li5.org

I don’t understand AlphaOne’s post at all! Anna wants to install Linux. Booting up DOS and formatting existing partitions with FAT isn’t going to help! W0rm is, of course (as always?), right on the money. It sounds like Anna needs to: 1.) Decide exactly what operating systems she wants to install 2.) Determine a partitioning scheme that'll work for her. Reading up on disk partitioning and file systems is highly recomemnded. There’s an enormous collection of very good information on the topic all over the ‘net. A quick Google search should put you on the right track. I'd post some tips on the topic, but this post would become terribly long. 3.) Delete all existing partitions on the hard disk. I recommend Ranish Partition Manager, but any good partitioning tool should be able to get the job done correctly. 4.) Create the partitions. Again, I recommend Ranish Partition Manager. 5.) Format the partitions with the appropriate file system (ext2fs, FAT, etc.) (Note that Linux actually manages virtually memory in a raw format on its swap partition(s), but you’ll probably need to format everything else.) 6.) Mark the partition you'll be booting as “Active” or “Bootable”. 7.) Install the operating system(s) For boot loaders, you may want to avoid LILO--primarily because of it’s dependence on BIOS routines. GRUB is much, much better. There are a plethora of other suitable (and free) boot loaders you could use.

Get someone to help you. You need enough knowledge of DOS to boot from a floppy disk and use FDISK and FORMAT. You want to format if you are going to inatall another Microsoft operating system, and you want to remove all the partitions with FDISK if you are going to install LINUX. I am not very familiar with installing Linux, but you follow the instructions that come with the operating system. (Make the partition and format it with Linux installation software that is to say.)

Andrew Ordo ---- how are you confused? she wanted to know how to format here drives and I just told her. go to dos and type 'format c:\'. I've never used linux so I dont know how it handles pre-installed op.systems or about it's partition/formatting functionality, so I cant comment on that. which is why i decided to answer here question as simply as possible. hence, my reply to... " i need to reformat my hard drive. i have no idea on how to do this. any help would be great." ok, you're right, mabey i should have been more clear in my post. therefore, i'm revising my previous post to say... anna, type "format c:\" from dos (where c:\ is the disk you want to format) definatly easier to understand. thx, .:AlphaOne:.