Appendix C. Removing Red Hat Linux

To uninstall Red Hat Linux from your system, you will need to remove the LILO information from your master boot record (MBR).

There are several ways to remove LILO from the MBR of your machine. If you are running Red Hat Linux, you can replace the MBR with an earlier saved version of the MBR using the /sbin/lilo command:

/sbin/lilo -u

In DOS, NT, and Windows 95 you can use fdisk to create a new MBR with the "undocumented" flag /mbr. This will ONLY rewrite the MBR to boot the primary DOS partition. The command should look like the following:

fdisk /mbr

If you need to remove Linux from a hard drive, and have attempted to do this with the default DOS fdisk, you will experience the "Partitions exist but they do not exist" problem. The best way to remove non-DOS partitions is with a tool that understands partitions other than DOS.

You can do this with the installation floppy by typing linux expert (without the quotes) at the boot: prompt:

boot: linux expert

Select install (versus upgrade) and at the point when you should partition the drive, choose fdisk. In fdisk, type [p] to print out the partition numbers, and remove the Linux partitions with the [d] command. When you are satisfied with the changes you have made, you can quit with a [w] and the changes will be saved to disk. If you deleted too much, type [q] and no changes will be made.

Once you have removed the Linux partitions, you can reboot your computer using [Control]-[Alt]-[Delete] instead of continuing with the install.