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Formatting drive after GRUB

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First post, by britain4

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Hi all,

Having a bit of an issue with an old laptop at the moment - a HP Omnibook 2000. Pentium 133 and 32MB RAM I think.

When I first bought it it came with a non-functional Linux install with GRUB. I’ve formatted the drive and attempted to install Windows 98 on it with no luck.

FDISK always reports the System type as “UNKNOWN” when formatted which I think is probably a result of the previous GRUB install?

My knowledge of anything Linux is practically non-existent so if anyone has any advice on removing all traces of GRUB and getting this drive formatted as FAT32 I’d be most grateful.

- 486DX2-66, SoundBlaster 16, Crystal VLB graphics
- P-MMX 200MHZ, PCChips M598LMR, Voodoo 1, AD1816
- PIII 933MHz, MSI MS6119, Voodoo3 3000, SB Live!
- PIII 1400MHz, ECS P6IPAT, Voodoo5 5500, SB Audigy

Reply 1 of 3, by megatron-uk

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Boot into Dos and do a "fdisk /mbr"

Grub replaces the first 512 bytes on disk (normally the master boot record), if you don't intend to have a multi-boot Linux/Dos/Windows system, then just clear it using the Dos fdisk command which will install a clean, standard Dos mbr.

My collection database and technical wiki:
https://www.target-earth.net

Reply 2 of 3, by britain4

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Thanks - reformatting now and running that and we’ll see how we go on!

- 486DX2-66, SoundBlaster 16, Crystal VLB graphics
- P-MMX 200MHZ, PCChips M598LMR, Voodoo 1, AD1816
- PIII 933MHz, MSI MS6119, Voodoo3 3000, SB Live!
- PIII 1400MHz, ECS P6IPAT, Voodoo5 5500, SB Audigy

Reply 3 of 3, by britain4

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Well we’re all back up and running now with a fresh install of 98lite - thanks for the advice! I tried to get this machine working some time ago and it just would not have it so I think that may have solved a multitude of problems!

For now running on an external monitor as the hinges were knackered, hoping my Araldite fix holds up but we’ll find out tomorrow.

- 486DX2-66, SoundBlaster 16, Crystal VLB graphics
- P-MMX 200MHZ, PCChips M598LMR, Voodoo 1, AD1816
- PIII 933MHz, MSI MS6119, Voodoo3 3000, SB Live!
- PIII 1400MHz, ECS P6IPAT, Voodoo5 5500, SB Audigy

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