Formating an NTFS bootable partition

[taalebi at ai.mit.edu (Al.)]

Hi Chris;

Thanks a lot for your comprehensive and very helpful response.
This was exactly the kindly of information I was looking for.

For now, I just want to get rid of the second WinXP installation
completely.

So based on your insights, I am planning to edit C:\boot.ini to:
       [boot loader]
    -> timeout=0
       default=multi(0) disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
       [operating systems]
       multi(0) disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="WinXP Pro C" /fastdetect

[WAHT DOES "/fastdetect" DO HERE? IS IT ONLY A COMMENT?]

Then I want to Format partition D. I used to run
	format D:
in older version of Windows.
Can I run that command from "cmd" in Win XP or there is a better way
of formatting partition D?

Many thanks in advance.
Al.

=====================

   Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 13:54:20 -0600 (CST)
   From: Chris Devers <cdevers at pobox.com>

   On Tue, 2 Mar 2004, Al wrote:

   > Is there any easy way of formatting D and getting rid of the bootup
   > selection menu aside from using software such as Partition Magic?

   Most Linux installers will offer to do both of these for you.

   If you just need to fix the boot selection thing, you can edit your
   C:\boot.ini file so that the timeout line is set to zero:

       [boot loader]
    -> timeout=0
       default=multi(0) disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
       [operating systems]
       multi(0) disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="WinXP Pro C" /fastdetect
       multi(0) disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="WinXP Pro D" 

   The default should be 30, which is about 30 seconds longer than you want. 

   Windows will also let you reformat, but only as NTFS or FAT32 or similar,
   which won't really help you; let the Linux installer do that part. For
   that matter, the Linux installer can probably fix the boot loader too by
   installing either Lilo or Grub. 


   -- 
   Chris Devers