Linux fdisk problems

[vista7]

Guys, my roommate was trying to dual boot between win2k & redhat; win2k was already an existing partition. The install crashed our entire system. Time to rescrub & setup win 98 again. Problem. I boot up with a 98 bootdisk and run fdisk: I only see 8gigs out of 12gigs. Next I go back into linux disk druid: I see 12 gigs; 4 is an existing partition. Next I delete the 4 gig partition. I tried to boot back into fdsik and still only see 8gigs!! Next I go into linux fdisk; the first message I see is that the cylinders are set to 16053 and that this may cause a problem in a DOS OS. Next go into the BIOS and check the disk; sure enough it is set for 16053 cylinders and this shows the largest disk available as 8gigs; I try to rerun the ide harddisk auto-detect; it does not change the cylinders. I do see a user command that advises that you can manually change the cylinders, but I have no idea how to set this and am afraid of really screwing up this harddrive. My roommate says it is time to write zero's & low level format. Any other ideas?

[Statica]

Ok a few pointers:

* did you use DiskDruid or fdisk?
* when using fdisk did you delete ALL the partitions?
* did you save the partition table?

If you want to clear out all partitions, and use win98, then dont create any new partitions.
Using win2k setup/partioning agent also clears out maladies.

[Statica]

Whats more worrisome is why it crashed after the multiboot attempt:
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Linux+WinNT-3.html

[earlboy]

What version of Redhat are you using. It could be that you are using an old version of fdisk which I believe have trouble when partioning large disks.