Ok ... I'm a newbie, but so far things have worked out pretty well until now. I loaded Ubuntu on a very small extra 3.2 GB Fijitsu hard drive with XP on my primary drive (Dual Bootable), and before I knew it, Ubuntu was filled. Dohhhhhh. It failed to allow login and went into a loop, but I searched online and I found out how to really "empty the trash". Anyway, doing a #sudo rm -fr $HOME/.Trash/ fixed that problem and I resolved not to install anything else and just become familiar with Ubuntu. Now, however, I find that trying to boot into my XP drive fails, and causes a reboot and comes back to the same Dual Boot Selection screen. I'm afraid to delete files that I'm not sure of in case it's the same problem ... but it doesn't seem to be. It just reboots when I select Windows XP! Any help appreciated!

I don't think emptying the trash on Ubuntu has anything to do with your system not booting XP.

When XP starts, press F8 to get the Advanced Options menu. There are several things you can do there to see if you can recover.

Try the Last Known Good Configuration. That may help. Try Safe mode. If you can not get it to boot, Enable Boot Logging, lwt it fail, and have a look in the log. There are some tings you can do from your install CD as well. Been a loooooggg time since I messed with it, I think there is an option there to single step the boot process, it allows you to see how far it gets before it screws up.

Have you booted windbloze since you stuck the extra drive in?

Cliff,
I've tried all the selections in F8 and the results are the same. There is a very quick blue screen flash (which I am unable to catch) and then it just reboots. All selections just result in a reboot. Even the selection to use the Command prompt causes a reboot. It seems like perhaps the XP portion of the script may be screwed up ... but I don't have a clue to what it's called ... or how to fix it. Yep .... I had been using XP as well as Ubuntu before. Now I don't even have a clue if I can get back XP. I tried pulling the cables on the Ubuntu drive but that didn't help either ... this causes it to come up with Error 21 (drive missing) ... so the Dual Boot script is on my main drive. Is the MBR fouled up? If so do you know how to repair.

Thanks for the reply,

Is your boot loader Lilo or Grub? To fix either, you have to boot to linux. The approach to modify either is different, so we need to know which you installed.

Ok .... looks like Grub 1.5.