HD Install :: can't start cfdisk

I had an experience w/ DSL where it would say FATAL ERROR when I tried to use cfdisk. Note: Running from CD. I solved the FATAL ERROR problem by instead of just typing 'cfdisk', I typed 'sudo cfdisk'.

Second, if things get messed up, you could try 'cfdisk -z'. The '-z' option zeroes the partition table. WARNING: This erases your partition table!

Third, about the type 7c type disk partition, just change that from 7c to what ever you need. (eg. 83, Linux partition.)

PS: I read this story where someone's Win XP wouldn't boot, so someone booted KNOPPIX, used cfdisk, and found out the partition was some crazy partition type. So they changed it back to NTFS, and everything worked!

littlepenguin

cool, there are some ideas.

first I ll try to boot from the live-cd and try sudo cfdisk again. I have not tried it yet because I have to boot from floppy and I do not have the floppy boot-disk anymore.
One the one hand I am very lazy loading a new floppy from the net while on the other hand I try out some cfdisk parameters for hours.

I think its time for high-speed floppy booting and running cfdisk from the live-cd

What will happen when i delete (or overwrite) the MBR? Will I loose all the data? I do not want to loose all the data.

My last question: What about my data when I delete type 7c (Its my first linux system and I messed the partitions up).
DSL is on /hda (not /hda1 ) and there is another /hda1 which does not work. A friend told me this is very odd.
Hda1 is displayed in /mnt. I am able to mount it and there is an dir called /optional (I didnt creste it). It seems to be the 10MB boot partition for old harddrives which my previous (unsuccesful) debian installation supposed to create

I hope I am not too chaotic today.

Greets C

I solved my problem yesterday in a brilliant way:
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=32k
and
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdc bs=32k.

I like it