On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 18:47:18 +1000 Johngibbons <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hello to all, > > A plea for guidance. I am a perennial beginner so it needs to be simple. I > have an old laptop that I installed Xandros on, supposedly beside XP. I > mucked up the installation and it wiped out XP. Then it would not talk to the > internet. So I uninstalled following book directions and, lo!, it vanished > but left me with a laptop whose screen says "no system installed". > > I have two possible steps in mind, either of which will do. First, to > reinstall XP and then add a Linux distro as I was able to do with another > distro before I stuffed up the Xandros installation. > > 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. > > Can someone help out with what I should type in? Please keeping it simple? > > The other route is to install Lindows 4 or Mandrake 10 exclusively. But when I > try that all I get is the "no system installed" notice. Is there something I > can type in that will get the installation CD to run? > > Any guidance gratefully appreciated. 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? 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. Matt -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
