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I am stupid. WinXP = Linare


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#1
The_Wanderer

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Hey guys,

Yeah, I'm pretty sure i'm gonna have to take my notebook to Best Buy's Geek Squad or something for this but i thought i'd give this a shot first. I'm over here at my parent's desktop posting this lol. Anyways, i dont have any restore CD's for my Acer and i was wondering maybe if anyone knows a way other than going to Best Buy to "restore" my Win XP? At first, i put the CD with the Linare iso in to check it out, thinking they had a Live! mode like Linspire did. Apparently, they didn't. Then, NEVER INSTALLING ANYTHING, i rebooted my computer and the blank screen of death came up. I rebooted twice more and finally chose to "partition" the drives or whatever and installed Linare, thinking maybe i have dual OS now. After booting back up, it saids choose a OS to boot and Linare was the only one there.....somehow my WinXP got erased? I wouldn't have a problem using Linare but i can't connect to the internet via my Wi Fi. It needs a "direct cable" connection in order to have web access. Does anyone have an idea at least? I hate to have to go to Best Buy just so they can "re-install" Windows. Thnx.

Yeah, dont mess around with ur OS. It's a nightmare.
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#2
dsenette

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it proabably just over wrote your MBR....i've personally never been good at fixing that but i'll see if i can get an extra eyeball or two in here
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#3
NullWolf

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Open the partitioning software. (Not sure what it is in Linare.) And see how many partitions are listed.
If you can't find the GUI tool, go to a terminal window and type fdisk then display a list of the partitions.

If you only have 1 partition, then XP was probably wiped out when you partitioned the drive. If all the partitioning did was a Non-destructive resize, then you might still have XP on the machine, and you should have at least 2 partitions, 1 of them NTFS.

Check the partitions first, then we can continue if XP is indeed still present.
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#4
yardguard

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Got a dos disk handy with fdisk on it?....If you do then boot from that and type fdisk /mbr
This will repair the MBR (Master Boot Record) and make it usuable for windows.

NOTE: This will make any new OS you've installed unaccessable....Just A windows OS will work (if one exists)...

It sounds to me like this "Linare" that you installed is an OS with a boot manager (maybe Grub..LILO...etc)
and it's not recognizing the installation of windows...I've had this happen before when installing Linux to play with and I just grabbed a dos disk and fixed the mbr and booted into windows and cleared out Linux installation.
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#5
gerryf

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Ideally, you ought to consider using the recovery console and running the fixmbr command. At the prompt, after loading, type:

fixmbr \Device\HardDisk0

(assuming you have Windows installed to the first drive on the PC).

I say ideally because even though fdisk /mbr from an old DOS disk will work, there can be odd problems with it for third party OS loaders. Since I do not kno what boot manager was loaded with this "Linare" I would feel more comfortable if you used the XP mbr repair method.

------------------
Some OEM windows CDs do not have recovery consoles on them, or if you cannot find your windows xp cd, download RC.iso from the following link:

http://www.thecomput...edic.com/rc.iso

You need to burn this image to a CD and boot your computer with it--this is different than burning a file to a CD. If you do not know how to burn an ISO image, then download the following program to another Windows XP machine, install it.

http://isorecorder.a...isorecorder.htm

After installation, right click the RC.iso file you downloaded above and choose COPY IMAGE TO CD.

Then reboot your PC with that CD in the CD-ROM drive and the cd-rom set as the first boot device.

This will give you a recovery console to use to run the above command at a command prompt.


------------------

All that said, the fact that you "partitioned" concerns me.
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#6
The_Wanderer

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Hey thnx for the help, guys.

I tried what u said, Gerry, and I got this thing saying about writing a new MBR? I also tried the installing WinXP on my laptop and it says that it couldn't find the EULA code or something and it stopped the installation. A friend of mine has Dell's WinXP restore CD when it came with his comp, and i was wondering it's possible to use his restore CD to get XP back on my comp? It's illegal right? Even so, is it possible? I have an Acer Aspire and he has a Dell Inspiron, i believe.

Again, thnx for help.
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#7
Michael

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That is what the command dose, writes a new MBR, do it again and say yes. This will fix the MBR that was over writen by Linux.

You can use you friends CD as long as you use your registration Key that came with your installation of Windows. It might not work because he an Acer Aspire and you have a Dell Inspiron.
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#8
pip22

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Never used any flavour of Linux, but was under the impression that installing Linux requires you to re-install Windows. That's why the so called Linux 'Live CD' distributions are so popular. If your installing both Linux and Windows for the first time, Linux must be installed first, otherwise you end up having to install Windows twice.
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#9
dsenette

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actually....except in certain circumstances....installling linux AFTER windows is usually the best option...as the boot loader for linux doesn't usually rewrite the whole mbr...where as the windows one will
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#10
Michael

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You normaly have to install Linux second because it's boot loader can boot to Windows and Linux, the Windows one only to Windows. So if you did install Windows after installing Linux you would not be able to boot to Linux defeating the point of installing Linux at all.
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#11
yardguard

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Good point MB but, I think most Linux distros have an option to create a floopy boot disk therefore not altering the MBR at all...IMHO this is the best route...

For the sake of discussion (altho should be in linux forum I suppose), I installed a Suse distro (very good distro of Linux) and it devoured my drive and ALL partitions requiring me to start from scratch..(Lesson Learned).....I've installed numerous distros of Linux but none has ever taken over the drive as this one did...Most are satisfied with a single partition.

As far as the order of installation MB is right....Linux must be installed second if installing on a HD (unless of course you're savvy enuf to hide the partitions and install your chosen OS and then unhide the partion...A lot of work and devotin and maybe a little insanity too...HEHE...

.
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