Help please have goofed again

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  1. Posts : 21,004
    Desk1 7 Home Prem / Desk2 10 Pro / Main lap Asus ROG 10 Pro 2 laptop Toshiba 7 Pro Asus P2520 7 & 10
       #1

    Help please have goofed again


    Have my trusty old Dell Dimension 2400 that I used for testing stuff on and VERY foolishly got it into a dual boot with Linux Mint instead of booting the Mint from a CD.

    Now the machine boots into Linux and I cannot get XP up - no option like 78 boot and wondering how on Earth I am going to get my XP back

    Is there any kind soul who can pity on an idiot
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  2. Posts : 19,383
    Windows 10 Pro x64 ; Xubuntu x64
       #2

    Have you tried CTRL+F11 during the post screen/boot options?
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  3. Posts : 21,004
    Desk1 7 Home Prem / Desk2 10 Pro / Main lap Asus ROG 10 Pro 2 laptop Toshiba 7 Pro Asus P2520 7 & 10
    Thread Starter
       #3

    No Golden like I said mate you are dealing with an idiot here thanks mate I'll try that.

    Golden you are a legend I know I say that about everyone but you all are if it were not for this forum mate I'd ave been cookoo a very long time ago.

    Thanks you so much for your time and infinite patience (with an idiot) I owe you one:-D
    Last edited by ICIT2LOL; 12 Nov 2011 at 22:30. Reason: Addition
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  4. Posts : 21,004
    Desk1 7 Home Prem / Desk2 10 Pro / Main lap Asus ROG 10 Pro 2 laptop Toshiba 7 Pro Asus P2520 7 & 10
    Thread Starter
       #4

    Well I have really mucked it up this time - went in saw there was some virtual drive tacked onto the end of my HDD so tried deleting it and it's all fallen in a heap.

    So am trying (and hoping that) the Dell disk will reinstall XP for me.

    Jeez this is going to teach me what for eh?? Oh idiots will be idiots I suppose. Otherwise I suppose I'll have to get another OS and format the drive and start from very scratch
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  5. Posts : 21,004
    Desk1 7 Home Prem / Desk2 10 Pro / Main lap Asus ROG 10 Pro 2 laptop Toshiba 7 Pro Asus P2520 7 & 10
    Thread Starter
       #5

    Ah well I have mucked it up this time have just reinstalled and on restart just getting the thing to reinstall all over again so I reckon I have had my little tester go to better places

    Unless I try a format once back in then do it again as the logical drives showed up again or should I just build myself a little 7 tester??
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  6. Posts : 5,092
    Windows 7 32 bit
       #6

    Whichever way you go with it my advice would be to set yourself up with image backup. If you have a few backup images on a couple of different external drives then you can experiment a bit without being too paranoid. A lot of times I would make mistakes just because I was too worried about messing up the system. Working under stress makes for bad decisions.

    I know that doesn't help you right this minute, but chances are you can get some OS to boot on the machine. Once you have it in a usable condition, do a couple of backup images before trying to tune it in a lot of detail. Then you have the confidence that you have over 90% chance you can undo any wrong move. As long as you don't turn the machine into a paperweight with a bad flash update you should be able to go back to the previous state.

    It helps you not too put too much pressure on yourself not to make a mistake. Kind of like if you remember to take your umbrella it doesn't rain. :)
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  7. Posts : 446
    windows 7 Pro 64Bit
       #7

    This may be a silly suggestion, but after re-install did you remove the windows disk? If not and the default boot device is cd instead of hdd you will repeat the install over again.
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  8. Posts : 21,004
    Desk1 7 Home Prem / Desk2 10 Pro / Main lap Asus ROG 10 Pro 2 laptop Toshiba 7 Pro Asus P2520 7 & 10
    Thread Starter
       #8

    Thanks Miles yeah mate I am just a tad impetuous at times - it's a VERY bad habit of mine and I thought that I had got over it - well the panic stations I had but errrr rushing no

    Well if I don't get anywhere next time then I suppose a nice little cheap build will be ok but it'll be a 7 one though the XP was a good ref when I fixed the friends machines for them, (Now there is a scary thought eh?)

    Oh and nitro errrrr yeeeeaaah I did leave it in and guess what

    Mind you the other install was a shocker as I could not adjust the display res or anything so what about I just format the thing and reinstall again hey look I might be impatient but I am a stayer - don't like - in fact hate things beating me
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  9. Posts : 12,364
    8 Pro x64
       #9

    Another method for future reference: use the XP disc to use the recovery console to to repair/re-write your MBR. It would have wiped grub, and set XP back to being the 'only' OS seen at boot.

    From there you can use EasyBCD to add an entry for Linux in the boot menu.



    Mint should have also added an XP entry to the Grub Boot loader. If not, it could have been added manually and set as default. From there you could have done some jiggery-pokery to use the Win boot loader as the default loader.


    As far as Linux/Windows boot shenanigans go - a lot of us have been there and swore at that. You're not the lone stranger
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  10. Posts : 21,004
    Desk1 7 Home Prem / Desk2 10 Pro / Main lap Asus ROG 10 Pro 2 laptop Toshiba 7 Pro Asus P2520 7 & 10
    Thread Starter
       #10

    Thanks smarteyeball mate I just been playing around with the Linux and mucking about with the email addresses in the credits I actually got onto the net even Google and a friend over here who is into Linux stuff at times has said to get Gparted app to wipe the disk as it is still showing partitions even after reinstalling the XP. Plus the strange GUI it popped up showed the Windows / apps etc

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

    Still it's past midnight here and I have to be off to town tomorrow
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