Inadvertently installed Linux recovery over XP OS... Help??
 

I had a desktop pc running XP home, my daughter has an Acer Aspire 100
running a Linux OS which developed a problem so I attempted to create a
recovery disk from the supplied DVD onto a memory stick via my desktop
pc. It transpires that the recovery wasmade to my desktop pc in error
and now my desktop does not boot up at all. Is there a way to remove
this 'recovery' at all and revert back to XP??


Thanks in anticipation.

Have you got the XP install disk ?
If all you did was create a bootable disk, you may be able to fix it.
If you actually created a partition and installed files, then it's going to be harder.

Did you do any partitioning while making the recovery disk ?

I have an XP system recovery disk which I have tried but during its process it says "cannot find partition" and then on the next step "unable to create a partition" and exits the installationso I assume that the Linux recovery disk installed a new partition. I am unable to enter BIOS or any function from the F keys apart from choosing a 'boot from'.

Er, the best I can offer is to get a live linux cd and copy what you can find off the hard drive.
If you had more than 1 partition, then the non-nuked one should be ok, depending on how the recovery "disk" was made.

What type of linux was the recovery disk for ?

If this is a Windows Recovery issue, you may be better off asking on a Windows forum.

The BIOS issue is interesting, though unrelated, your BIOS is stored on a BIOS Chip, and is independent from the HDD.

Can you boot from the Linux DVD? Do you have another machine that you can plug this HDD into?

I'm not sure how many partitions the XP had Smoker but I'll try what you suggest! What is a Live Linux CD? A new install disk??
On the Acer recovery disk it says V1.0.9 if that helps. I can't believe I've been such a numbty!!

James, I thought I'd try the Linux forum as it's the one that's 'taken over' my pc! I haven't tried the Linux DVD yet and I don't have another desktop, only this laptop! With the BIOS I normally press F2 on boot-up but this doesn't work anymore and neither do any other keys, except F10 for boot options! Oh happy day's!!

Have a read of this :
http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.ph...=1&front_id=12

A 'Live Linux CD' is a CD that boots up and runs Linux straight from the CD, with no partitioning required. These days the majority of distributions offer a Live CD, and some use it as their primary install method too - once in the Live CD you run the installer program. Some are DVDs rather than CDs. Well-known Live CDs include Knoppix, the 'original'* and feature-packed; the Ubuntu standard CD, which I've found very good at installing software not supplied on the CD - the software is installed to RAM and goes away when you reboot; and the System Rescue CD, which is suitable for those knowledgeable about Linux and I would say it's the single most important CD I have.

* Knoppix wasn't actually the first Live CD, but it was the first to become very popular.

I believe the linux concerned is Linpus which is based on fedora and aimed at netbooks.
God knows what it's done, but I'll try to get a copy to see what happens.

Looks like the site has disappeared. Try again later.

To be utterly explicit, your XP is gone. The data has been overlaid. There is no XP left to recover. It's probably not worth your effort to try to figure out what you've bunged up in your Linux install either, since you have no data to save.

As to what to do next, there are several options. One is to contact Acer and ask for a new XP install disk. They may charge you for it, but it shouldn't be that expensive. More than likely the XP install codes are printed on the PC somewhere, so you should just be able to do a reinstall.

Another option is to decide which Linux distro you want to use and download an install image for that distro. It will be a .iso file. Have the CD program write it to the CD/DVD as an image, then install Linux.

Thanks Smoker, I'll wait for your investigation!
Thanks to Cantab for your info too.

How do you know ?
Acer supplied the netbook, not the pc.
He didn't install it, he tried to create a rescue disk.

If you're not going to help, keep quiet. There is still a chance of recovering files, so doing a straight reinstall is stupid.

Sorry, I did not read the original problem closely enough. What a mess.

Nonetheless, the odds are that the data is gone unless it's worth spending a lot of time and effort on. The "recovery disk" data that was put on the PC was probably in the hundreds of megabytes. That, at the very least, has totally replaced the directory structure. He might be able to get at it by using a Linux LiveCD such as Knoppix and the "testdisk" and/or "photorec" program.

"testdisk" should be on the Knoppix CD. If it's not, here's a place to start. There is also the package "photorec" that might be helpful.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

The OP might also use the search button over on the right and search for both testdisk and photorec.

Update.

Apparently the recovery disk contains a 1GB disk image which is intended to replace the entire OS on the acer.

So what you have probably done is overwrite about 1GB at the start of your windows drive.

You may be able to rescue this using a partition recovery tool, but to be honest, the best you can do is to use a live cd (as mentioned above) to see what files you can rescue.

Then reinstall XP.
How much free space did you have on windows ?

Are you familiar with partitioning tools ?