Ok this is the story.

I have XP pro dual booting with FC1. I like it. But now when I boot for windows, in the little windows starting screen (you know, the one with the little blue slider), it flickers and blinks on and off. Its kinda annoying. Plus, my boot times have increased about 1 minute for windows.


And for linux, is there any way to get rid of all the writing when you boot into FC1? I dont really like it, I know I know, its being anal retentitve and superficial, but its really ugly. And is there any way to get rid of that [OK] list at the shut down of FC1. Thats ugly too

Sounds like the partitions were resized improperly. Xp is most likely trying to read info from all the partitions. I reccomend using Partition Magic from in side XP and redoing your partitions. To get a proper install, i have to make the unused space into a primary (not logical) partition and just format it as FAT. Then when I go to install Fedora or whatever it will show to XP as a seperate primary partition and not an extension of DOS. So Windows XP will ignore it from the start.

Hmm. You mean reinstall XP? Nah. That would really piss me off. I have had so many problems with XP when I had to reformat, sometimes it hates my partitions, sometimes it hates my two HD's and sometimes its just plain irritating. But that is a moot point. Is there any quick fix, or maybe just involving uninstalling FC1. I really dont want to redo windows.

Now I didn't say reinstall xp. Do those other steps and see where you're at. If that didn't remedy the situation then to make it work correctly WITH Linux installed you might have to reinstall Windows. ONLY if that didn't work and ONLY if you just HAD to have Fedora on your PC. Otherwise just repeat the steps above and just have Windows again.

Oh god. I think I completly fucked up my computer, Please god someone help.

I wanted to get rid of linux, and since all my linux things were primary partitions, I switched them to logical, thinking maybe that was your advice (too bad I didn';t check ). Then I rebooted.

It brought me to some terminal for grub without graphics and just saying:

grub>

So I restarted using the partition magic saving cd's thinking it would let me change it back. I did so. Then when I rebooted again, it STILL brought me to the text only screen.

So I went back into partition magic and I deleted the /boot partition thinking it would not let Grub load and just default to windows. I was wrong, it still gave me grub.

So I used the windows recovery tool with the boot discs because my cd drive wont boot from or detect the win xp pro cd.

Then I made another boot partition there thinking it would be the same, but it wasnt. Then I still got grub

So I went back to the windows one and did fixmbr. Now my computer doesnt even give me grub, it just gives me that screen where is says the things in your comp, you know the one with the rectangle of ****** around it. And it sits there and eventually turns itself off.

So I used the partition magic saveme discs and it told me that drive C:/ was bad, and I wasn't able to edit anything. I can only format it, but I dont want to, its not even the files that Im worried about, its the fact that I can't boot from a CD even with BIOS, so I won't be able to reinstall fedora OR linux. Can someone please please please please please help me? I know I shouldn't of done half that crap but I dont know what to do now...

Please help me...

If you ran fixmbr and windows does not boot then I would guess something has happened to the windows filesystem at some point.

You should try to hide the linux partitions using grub or put them on a primary partition, or a logical partition in an extended partition created by linux, not a windows extended partition.

The easiest thing to have done would have been to hide the linux partitions using grub. However it sounds like it's too late at this point to save the windows system.

At this point the only option I can see is to run a full recovery of windows. This will replace the windows file system and let you get back to your xp installation. Not the repair console the full recovery. I've gone through this exact same thing before. itherwise you will have to slave your hard drive to another and back up your files that way.

Actually, I fixed it using a combination of the win XP pro SP1 boot discs and deleting all the linux partitions, then using Partition magic boot discs, setting the NTFS system as active and resizing it to the whole hd which allowed the MBR to work because it wasnt a wonky partition.

However, now I cannot access my slave because the mbr messed it up. That has 40 gigs of music on it, NOT GOOD TO LOSE. It had, for some odd reason, a 38 gig partition and a 8 mg unallocated space. Patition magic wont let me change it because it says its 'Bad' and says the MBR is buggered up. Anyway I could change this?

And now, there is some 0mg partition called OPUS, what is that? I did do a boot partition using the windows boot discs, but the file system is called OPUS. Can anyone help?

Unless something has changed Partition Magic only manages partitions by resizing them. So if you combine two or more existing partitions I do believe you will still have some small unusable partition left over.

This may have been changed in the later versions, but I don't see how really giving the way they work.