Help please have goofed again

[ICIT2LOL]

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

 

[Golden]

Have you tried CTRL+F11 during the post screen/boot options?

 

[ICIT2LOL]

No Golden like I said mate you are dealing with an idiot here :banghead: 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

 

[ICIT2LOL]

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

 

[ICIT2LOL]

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??

 

[MilesAhead]

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.

 

[nitroman84]

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.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

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

 

[smarteyeball]

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

 

[ICIT2LOL]

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

 

[smarteyeball]

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.

 

[MilesAhead]

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.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

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