LINUX- Any Legacy LILO experts around here? Gotta Q or two...

[ahhaa]

I've got a computer situation to straighten out, where mebbe experience counts more than theory...

It was originally built with XP sp1, has had both McAfee & Symantec IS suites on it over time. 3 partitions on the HD, a C: XP & software 10G, an E: everything else 50G, and...
EDIT
It wasn't GRUB after all- it is some kind of graphical LILO or something called DrakX...
20G is tied up for a Linux dual boot which used the old legacy version GRUB to create itself. The Linux is vintage Mandrake; the root password is long forgotten, so both GRUB & linux are inaccessible.

On the XP side, its now sp2, and it's had the usual bunch of auto-updates. C: is getting really crowded, and I'd like to remove the old GRUB & Mandrake from the 20 Gigs it's holding down, add 10G or so to C: & then mebbe put Ubuntu or somesuch back, prob'ly at a later time. All this without knocking out a daily workhorse computer.

a. I'm wondering if there's anything 'non-obvious' about doing this that would get me in trouble. Most advice I've found on the web is outdated stuff relating to A:> FDISK /MBR; or getting at GRUB from within Linux.

b. I have Data Lifeguard & SeaTools, but not Partition Magic. I can't seem to get a LiveCD linux happy with the mobo (epia M10000) display, for unknown reasons. (The Mandrake worked fine).

any advice or links appreciated...

ps also, but unrelated- my 'Saving Your Settings' time is suddenly up to several minutes. Anybody else seeing this on their machines?

[lenti_75]

you can't add to C unless you delete both first

you better get a 160Gb drive for $40, and use a copy softwaer as Acronis and copy c over the new drive, then you can mess qround with partitions.

[deadrats]

I've got a computer situation to straighten out, where mebbe experience counts more than theory...

It was originally built with XP sp1, has had both McAfee & Symantec IS suites on it over time. 3 partitions on the HD, a C: XP & software 10G, an E: everything else 50G, and...

20G is tied up for a Linux dual boot which used the old legacy version GRUB to create itself. The Linux is vintage Mandrake; the root password is long forgotten, so both GRUB & linux are inaccessible.

On the XP side, its now sp2, and it's had the usual bunch of auto-updates. C: is getting really crowded, and I'd like to remove the old GRUB & Mandrake from the 20 Gigs it's holding down, add 10G or so to C: & then mebbe put Ubuntu or somesuch back, prob'ly at a later time. All this without knocking out a daily workhorse computer.

a. I'm wondering if there's anything 'non-obvious' about doing this that would get me in trouble. Most advice I've found on the web is outdated stuff relating to A:> FDISK /MBR; or getting at GRUB from within Linux.

b. I have Data Lifeguard & SeaTools, but not Partition Magic. I can't seem to get a LiveCD linux happy with the mobo (epia M10000) display, for unknown reasons. (The Madrrake worked fine).

any advice or links appreciated...

ps also, but unrelated- my 'Saving Your Settings' time is suddenly up to several minutes. Anybody else seeing this on their machines?

if you really want to get into your linux partition and you didn't configure GRUB with it's own password, you can access single user mode which will allow you to reset your root password:

http://www.systura.com/linux/singlegrub.php

if you just want to blow away the linux partitions completely, just download Ubuntu (if that's what you really want), start the install process, and use Ubuntu's disk tools to delete the existing linux partition, then create the 10 gig partition for Ubuntu and set up the dual boot.

i strongly recommend against trying to expand the C partition, just create another 10 gig partition, it's much safer on your data.

[ahhaa]

Thanks guys- that single user command looks like what I'd need.
I may be wrong, but I think the seatools manual said you can re-partition non-destructively; but that's definitely nervous-making. Will go with another partition- mebbe I can cadge Office & such over there & get some headroom on C:

I've got a Ubuntu disk; I like Linux but have apps like Turbolister that won't run on it. I dl'd a couple virtual machines, which conceptually seems like a solution, but whew! talk about learning curve!:]

[ahhaa]

Well, it didn't work after all- the e command just froze the timeout. On start-up, its a blue screen with no logo or version number. I found some info that it was not GRUB, it was installed with either LILO or DrakX or Disk Commander, and is in either the HD's boot sector or the /Boot partition, and there are 3 non-NTFS partitions- 2 Linux natives and a swap...

I found this: How to Uninstall Linux

If for any reason you want to uninstall Mandrakelinux, you can do so. The process of uninstalling Mandrakelinux is done in two steps:

[Warning] Warning Removing partitions on your hard drive will inevitably result in the loss of all data stored on those partitions. Please make sure you've backed up all of the data you want to keep before proceeding.

1. Delete all partitions related to Mandrakelinux on your hard drive (usually partitions hosting ext3 file systems and the Swap partition) and — optionally — replace them with a single partition using DiskDrake (see the section called “Managing your Hard Drive Partitions through DiskDrake”).
2. Remove the bootloader, LILO in this example, from the Master Boot Record (MBR). To do so, execute lilo -U in a console, as root. Doing this will not only uninstall LILO but will also restore the previous master boot record, if any.

If you have a different boot loader, please refer to its documentation to determine how to regenerate the master boot record.
http://iew3.technion.ac.il/CC/Comp_news/Mandrake_starter/uninstall-linux.html

At Mandriva, its the same except for:
2. Uninstall the boot loader (generally LILO) from the Master Boot Record (MBR). To do so, boot under DOS and run the fdisk /mbr command.

If you have another OS, please refer to its documentation to determine how to regenerate the master boot record with it. Goodbye, and thank you for using Mandrake Linux!
http://www.mandriva.ie/documentation/How_to_Uninstall_Linux.html

also found an intersting article here: http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm