Help please have goofed again

ICit2lol said:

I don't think now that all may be lost and like you say a bit of fiddling never hurt anyone did it?

Nothing a complete re-install can't fix (or several if you're on a roll) :)

Gparted app to wipe the disk as it is still showing partitions even after reinstalling the XP

Yep. The other partitions would still be there unless you opted to format the entire drive during XP re-installation.

Otherwise it would have simply formatted the partition XP is on.


Once you have it all sorted and are possibly still keen to try Linux, perhaps try the WUBI installer option. It creates a NTFS VHD and boot entry for Mint.

The good thing about using WUBI is that you can 'uninstall' Mint from within XP like an application.

Alternatively during Mint installation, you can adjust where to 'put' the Grub loader. I typically place the Grub loader on the same partition as the Linux installation. (Essentially avoids Grub hijacking the Win boot loader. Also makes wiping a Linux partition painless).

Once you reboot, it will go straight to Windows where you can use the aforementioned EasyBCD to add an entry and 'point' it towards the partition you have Linux on.

Alternatively during Mint installation, you can adjust where to 'put' the Grub loader. I typically place the Grub loader on the same partition as the Linux installation. (Essentially avoids Grub hijacking the Win boot loader. Also makes wiping a Linux partition painless).

I used to do the same thing with Mandrake(now Mandriva).

When you turn on the machine you get the Windows boot menu, then if you select Linux you get the grub menu. You can play with custom kernels and add them to the grub menu very easily. Or have configurations that load a certain set of modules etc..

If you decide to remove Linux just remove it from the Windows boot menu. Then delete your Linux partitions or whatever. As smarteyeball says, it avoids that issue where you come up to an unbootable system if you just delete the Linux partitions.

No fellas I never had an option to bot to XP or Linux - it always booted to Linux. That what the problem was and my clumsy attempt at getting rid of the Linux and ensuing wrecking of my XP OS.

I have reinstalled the XP but it takes forever to boot going form screen to screen ending up with hitting the F1 key and the subsequent XP is a VERY basic interface perhaps the most basic I have ever seen.

Now I did another reinstall last night where it asked for the activation code and I thought oh at last here we go but it suddenly restarted and went to the third spot down - I wasn't quick enough to get a shot of it and started loading files again.
So I just shut it down - too tired.

Anyway I have attached some shots of the usual start up keep in mind that the time interval between each screen varies anything form two minutes to a minute (an eternity when waiting). At the F1 prompt it goes to the last BASIC screen. The quality of the pics are not crash hot I'm afraid.

The other thing is I can boot form the Linux CD I made at the time although I think it is about 99c in the $ as it does load properly and has these little brown icons constantly running across the taskbar. The little disk never stops spinning indicating to dumb - yes I am dumb for even trying rid the machine in the way I did- me that something is still going on.
Now I did play with the "credits" in a little pane and clicked on an email address for one of the workers and low and behold I got onto the net including Google - something that the XP flatly refuses to do so again indicating to me that something is not quite right with the XP install and the machine itself is functional.
That is where I am up to at the moment if I could get hold of another IDE drive I'd just stick that in and reinstall but they are like hen's teeth so I might just try one of some old second handers I have here.
Hope I haven't bored everyone to sleep with my woes - I am just so angry at muself for not doing a clone before now or be able to find the back up I did albeit done a long time ago