Help ... I need some body

littlejp

Hopefully someone could help me out with this. I recently partitioned my hard drive so that I could install Fedora on my laptop. I was hoping to set it up to have a dual boot. When I installed Fedora it ignored the partition and in fact it removed the partition and wiped XP off my hard drive. This doesn't matter, I have a back up of my files, the problem I'm having now is that I want to reinstall XP either along with Fedora or instead of it. My Wireless Card doesn't work in Linux and I can't connect directly to the router.

The thing is when I tried to boot from the XP installation disk it says "setup will now check your hardware configuration..." then the screen goes black and the light that indicates the hard drive is being accessed lights up and stays lit up.
I used this XP disk a few days before I put Fedora on and it worked fine which makes me think that Fedora is somehow stopping the XP installation process from starting properly.

Any help or ideas would be appreciated???

Beelzebub

littlejp wrote:

Hopefully someone could help me out with this. I recently partitioned my hard drive so that I could install Fedora on my laptop. I was hoping to set it up to have a dual boot. When I installed Fedora it ignored the partition and in fact it removed the partition and wiped XP off my hard drive. This doesn't matter, I have a back up of my files, the problem I'm having now is that I want to reinstall XP either along with Fedora or instead of it. My Wireless Card doesn't work in Linux and I can't connect directly to the router.

The thing is when I tried to boot from the XP installation disk it says "setup will now check your hardware configuration..." then the screen goes black and the light that indicates the hard drive is being accessed lights up and stays lit up.
I used this XP disk a few days before I put Fedora on and it worked fine which makes me think that Fedora is somehow stopping the XP installation process from starting properly.

Any help or ideas would be appreciated???

Came across this article, not sure if it applies to your case:
http://lwn.net/Articles/86835/

delop

Me thinks its a Master Boot Record problem....

What you need to do is use your windows boot disk to run this comand

fdisk /mbr

then install XP again..

Had the same Wireless prob as you on SUSE, pain in the A** It was possible to get it going but man it was a bit complex, to me anyhow :-(

littlejp

thanks man. just had a quick glance and it sounds like it might be the same problem.

littlejp

delop wrote:

Me thinks its a Master Boot Record problem....

What you need to do is use your windows boot disk to run this comand

fdisk /mbr

then install XP again..

Had the same Wireless prob as you on SUSE, pain in the A** It was possible to get it going but man it was a bit complex, to me anyhow :-(

I'm a wee bit retarded when it comes to computers outside windows. how do I run that command? where from?

delop

littlejp wrote:

I'm a wee bit retarded when it comes to computers outside windows. how do I run that command? where from?

No prob :-)

Put in your XP disk, boot from it, and get a command prompt, that coudl be the F5 or F8 key while its booting up..

So to clarify, you need to get a command prompt without booting from the HD

fdisk is a dos command for partitioning you HD, and the /mbr clears you MASTER BOOT RECORD , some linux distros but boot loaders in there....

Just thinkign though if you use your XP cd to delete all partitions on your HD that might be just as good

littlejp

thanks. that might be a problem though, when I go to boot from the XP disk it goes straight to "checking hardware" and then freezes. When do I go to command prompt. Before or after this?

delop

littlejp wrote:

thanks. that might be a problem though, when I go to boot from the XP disk it goes straight to "checking hardware" and then freezes. When do I go to command prompt. Before or after this?

Oh dear that sounds a bit more serious, I believe u can skip the hardware check by hitting ESC b4 it ....

hope it works out, keep at it...

littlejp

thanks for all the advice. Much appreciated.

monkey tennis

delop wrote:

fdisk /mbr

Probably a good idea to make a boot floppy for your linux install before wiping your MBR.

maxheadroom

Do you want to keep fedora or just install windows?

fdisk /mbr is the wrong command to use for XP - you'd need to get into a recovery console and use the fixboot or fixmbr commands.

If you want to get rid of fedora completely, I'd suggest downloading the gparted live cd and erasing all partitons on your disk. Windows setup needs some temporary space on the hard disc, but if your disc is completely full with linux partitions then it will get stuck because it doesn't understand how to write to them

littlejp

I wouldn't mind keeping it but I just need to get XP back running. I'm gonna try that Gparted thing. XP should install from the boot disk easy enough when that's done, should it?
Thanks everyone for the help.

maxheadroom

littlejp wrote:

I wouldn't mind keeping it but I just need to get XP back running. I'm gonna try that Gparted thing. XP should install from the boot disk easy enough when that's done, should it?
Thanks everyone for the help.

I'd suggest you use gparted to partition the disk exactly how you want it and then reinstall XP first followed by fedora. When installing fedora, make sure you don't overwrite the XP partition this time

littlejp

I tried downloading that Gparted program but couldn't get it to work. I'm a novice with Linux and my only net connection is on a different pc. Is there any other software I could burn to CD that would boot from the cd and reset the hard drive which will then allow me to install windows?

littlejp

Phew.
I'm finally back in business. I tried all those linux suggestions but they were all over my head. I found an old download I had of Ubuntu and with nothing to lose I installed it. I guess Ubuntu uses the same file system as XP because I was able to reinstall XP onc Ubuntu was on.
It will be a while before I try using Linux again.

Once again thanks for all the help.