I installed the Mandriva on my external HD with the Live DVD. I seemed to be all good. It said to reboot. I did. I fired the Laptop back up and booted from the HD. It booted fine I guess. I never did get to the GUI. I went straight to a command line. I am not even close to knowing what to do from there yet. To make matters even worse I shut the lpt down, unplgged the HD, which was in an usb port. I rebboted to get to XP and I'll damned if I didn't get some crazy 0707070707070707070707070707070707007070707070707070707070707070707070707070707070070707070707070707 070707070 stuff plastered on half the screen. I quickly plugged the external back in and rebooted and got back to windows. I am not only at a loss for words, but I feel defeated. I don't know what to do next besides beat myself up.

any help would be a LIFE SAVER!!!!

chief

when you installed Mandriva it most likely removed the 'Boot' flag from the internal HD
what you would need to do if that is the case is (and this is the only way I know if anyone else knows an easier way follow it) DL GParted and add the 'Boot' flag back to the original HD, you should then be able to boot from that HD, then edit your boot.ini and add the external HD/OS as an option
here is a link to a site to help if you don't know how to edit boot.ini

I am still a newb and not sure if I offer the best and easiest way to fix your issue
I hope this is of some help to you

thanks for the post, I have fixed it using the recovery disc from Dell. It just simply reloaded the MBR to it's original state.