Thanks Patrick.
Thanks to everyone who sent me some help. I finally got Xandros re-installed
by using the floppy and CD plus jiggling the delete key. How it works, I have
no idea but thanks to Patrick who suggested the combination of magic passes.
Still no sign of any BIOS.
I now have the problem of getting Xandros to recognise my modem. It appears
the laptop has two. Unfortunately both are Winmodems which I understand are
often problems in themselves. They are shown as follows:
(1) Agere Systems
pci: 0x11C1, 0x441, 0x38. (Whatever all that means? Should I have
typed a capital O and not a zero?)
(2) Toshiba|FIR Port
driver: donauboe
Manu: Toshiba American Info Systems.
pci: 0x1179, 0x701, 0x50. (Again, is the zero really be a capital O?)
Would greatly appreciate some more advice.
John.
On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 12:07 pm, Patrick Lesslie wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 24, 2004 at 09:00:21PM +1000, Johngibbons wrote:
> > On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 08:37 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > > Johngibbons <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > > 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.
>
> Something you could try at the A: prompt is to type C:
> and see if it can see your C: drive. If it can, then it should
> confirm that the master boot record (mbr) has been corrupted and
> nothing else has been damaged. This is a fairly common pitfall
> when setting up dual boot systems. You could even use fdisk
> (I think) from the A: prompt, to investigate the partitioning of
> the drive.
>
> So the avenue may still be open to install a new boot record
> via one of Matt's suggestions.
>
> > > 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?
>
> Yes, configuring the bios usually means hitting <DEL> or some other
> key combination very shortly after powering up the machine, which
> will bring up the bios "setup" screen, where you can typically set
> the boot device order to boot first from CD.
>
> > > 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.
>
> One of my favourites is to use a Smart Boot Manager (SBM) floppy,
> which comes on some linux CDs as a floppy-sized image. You really
> need another system though to create one of those. Once you have
> one you boot off that and it brings up a menu of other bootable
> devices on the machine, including the CD drive.
>
> > No bios shows up Matt, just a black screen with "no system installed". It
> > ignores the presence of bootable CDs. It also gets me nowhere when I put
> > in a boot floppy for XP, because that is when I get the "A:\" showing up.
> > I tried a boot floppy for Mandrake 10. I got about 8 or 10 lines of
> > indeciferable stuff followed by the invitation to put in a CD and press
> > any key. I did but nothing happened except a repeat of the lines of
> > nonsence followed by the same invitation to insert a CD.
>
> This doesn't sound so good ... Could you post those lines?
> If you have a floppy for Xandros it would be good to try that, since
> Xandros has been successfully installed before. There should be
> images on the CD for making floppies, which, like SBM, you should be
> able to create on another PC (even under windows). If you can install
> Xandros again, in the same partition as last time, then you'll be well
> placed to repair the MBR and get windows back.
>
> If the Xandros partition filled the drive, wiping windows,
> then you'll have to start from scratch. You might be able to type
> "setup" at the A: prompt for that, but I'm not sure, and in any case,
> I'd recommend linux ... :-) We can always fix your internet
> connection ... that's the easy bit.
>
> BTW, how did you get Xandros installed last time?
>
> Patrick Lesslie
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