On Thu, Jun 24, 2004 at 09:00:21PM +1000, Johngibbons wrote: > On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 08:37 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Johngibbons <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > I have a boot floppy for XP but I get the "A:>\" thing and I do not know > > > what to type after that to get it moving along. So this route is beyond > > > me at the moment.
Something you could try at the A: prompt is to type C: and see if it can see your C: drive. If it can, then it should confirm that the master boot record (mbr) has been corrupted and nothing else has been damaged. This is a fairly common pitfall when setting up dual boot systems. You could even use fdisk (I think) from the A: prompt, to investigate the partitioning of the drive. So the avenue may still be open to install a new boot record via one of Matt's suggestions. > > Assuming the windows partition is actually ok, and you have > > merely killed the mbr, you should be able to do one of: > > > > 1. boot from windows cdrom and choose repair > > 2. install linux and use grub to boot the windows partition > > > > Have you configured the bios to boot from cdrom? Yes, configuring the bios usually means hitting <DEL> or some other key combination very shortly after powering up the machine, which will bring up the bios "setup" screen, where you can typically set the boot device order to boot first from CD. > > If you can't boot from cdrom, you'll have to boot from floppy. > > There are various ways to get a windows boot floppy or linux > > boot floppy. One of my favourites is to use a Smart Boot Manager (SBM) floppy, which comes on some linux CDs as a floppy-sized image. You really need another system though to create one of those. Once you have one you boot off that and it brings up a menu of other bootable devices on the machine, including the CD drive. > No bios shows up Matt, just a black screen with "no system installed". It > ignores the presence of bootable CDs. It also gets me nowhere when I put in a > boot floppy for XP, because that is when I get the "A:\" showing up. I tried > a boot floppy for Mandrake 10. I got about 8 or 10 lines of indeciferable > stuff followed by the invitation to put in a CD and press any key. I did but > nothing happened except a repeat of the lines of nonsence followed by the > same invitation to insert a CD. This doesn't sound so good ... Could you post those lines? If you have a floppy for Xandros it would be good to try that, since Xandros has been successfully installed before. There should be images on the CD for making floppies, which, like SBM, you should be able to create on another PC (even under windows). If you can install Xandros again, in the same partition as last time, then you'll be well placed to repair the MBR and get windows back. If the Xandros partition filled the drive, wiping windows, then you'll have to start from scratch. You might be able to type "setup" at the A: prompt for that, but I'm not sure, and in any case, I'd recommend linux ... :-) We can always fix your internet connection ... that's the easy bit. BTW, how did you get Xandros installed last time? Patrick Lesslie -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
