Unable to Delete a Partition or Logical DOS Drive Using the Fdisk Utility (261473)

SYMPTOMS

When you attempt to remove a partition using the Fdisk utility that is included with Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition, or Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me), you may receive the following error message:

Cannot delete Extended DOS Partition while logical drives exist

However, when you attempt to remove a logical drive in the extended DOS partition from within the Fdisk utility, you may receive the following error message:

No Logical Drives defined

CAUSE

This behavior occurs if the extended DOS partition is an NTFS partition. This behavior can also occur if the partition has been created with a third-party operating system such as BeOS or versions of UNIX.

RESOLUTION

WARNING: Microsoft recommends that you back up all important data before you use the following method.

To remove the partition, you should use the partition utility included with the third-party operating system that is installed on your computer. You can also contact the third-party vendor's technical support department.

MORE INFORMATION

In addition, Fdisk cannot delete partitions that have descriptors outside of the allowed area 1BEh-1FDh. Also, Fdisk cannot delete a non-MS-DOS logical drive in an extended partition.

For additional information about the Fdisk utility, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

255867 How to Use Fdisk and Format to Partition or Repartition a Hard Disk

For additional information about how to manually remove a partition without using the third-party partitioning software, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

106419 Removing Non-DOS Partitions with Debug