I have two drives C and D. XPpro and lots of software are on C which works satisfactorily except that "My Computer" no longer recognizes drive D on which a.n.other loaded Linux Mandrake 8.2. Unfortunately when trying to load Linux I get a chaotical screen and no response from keyboard/mouse. Accessing via BIOS setup doesn't either and have to effect brute force shut downto get back to XPpro. I cannot find a way of removing Linux and making drive D available once again. Maybe then I can re-load a clean Linux Mandrake 8.2 again which is on 3 CD's but no floppy.

Mandrake actually partitions the hard drive it is installed on into at least 2 partitions. 1 for the OS and data, and another partition for the swap file. To delete these partitons and have them be able to be formatted again, you need to boot up from your Windows XP CD and choose the repair option. Once you are logged on to the Windows installation, run Diskpart to delete all of the partitions on the drive that linux mandrake is installed on. After all of the partitions are deleted, you will need to create a primary partiton so that Windows XP can read the drive. After you have done this, you will need to exit Diskpart and restart your computer. When your computer is restarting, choose the option to boot from the CD again. choose to repair an existing XP installation. After you are logged on to windows, you need to format the hard drive that has the empty partition on it. If you want it in NTFS, you do not need to add any switch for it to do so. If you want to format it in FAT32, type this: FORMAT D: /FS:FAT32. After formatting is complete, you should be able to recognize the drive once again. To remove LiLo as your boot launcher, you need to type in the command FIXBOOT to rewrite your boot record. When it is complete, just restart your machine normally (without the CD) and you should boot right into windows.