Thank you for your welcome mail, in fact since i 
joined i have been supprised by the activity. This being the first mailing list 
i have joined.
Whilst not completely to new to computing i started 
playing around with the Acorn Electron ( perhaps a blast from the past). Then 
came a break for a few years. i started again in 1994 and have been using the 
dare i say it, the microsoft system.
I had read a lot about Linux and started to get a 
hankering to try it out.
My son who had recently installed Linux on 
his computer, The Mandrake 7.1 variation. Gave me a copy as a 
present.
 
Due to pressure of work i have not yet had time to 
get really into it although i have read and purchased a number of books on 
elementary Linux. I could not hack it in 24 Hours as the title of one book 
suggested.
Here i am a newboy or not so new really, wishing to 
learn something about the system.
Without pushing my luck on the length of 
correspondence allowed could one of you learned gentlemen help.
 
My system recently got its knickers in a twist so i 
decided to format the hard drive and start again, something i have done in the 
past. What is did not even think about at the time was that i would lose contact 
with my Linux partition. The system was dual booted via GRUB so i could either 
go into Windows or Linux. Now i can only get into windows which is not what i 
want.
How can i format all of my hard drive and 
repartition the drive to enable me to reinstall Linux.
 
Colin Davis