hi everyone !!!!

i have got a general problem and i don't now what to do.

this is the story, : i had installed PClinuxOS for the first time in my live on a computer.
i thought to don't use my entirely harddisk so i can install windows to.
linux did very well, so i wanted to install windows XP to.
i did that with the rest of my unpartitioned space but... it says that could not install it on the new partition i made because it was no windows partition. so i deleted the partition and i made a new partition, but it still doesn't work.
i gave up to install windows and want to go on the internet to find a answer why it doesn't work.
but... linux doesn't work anymore.
when i boot it says : error while loading operating system !!!
i don't now what to do because when i want to install linux again from the life-CD it says the same again after restarting !!! can someone help me out please.

Hi

1. It seems that the Windows bootloader has overwritten LILO. To fix it, boot from the live CD, at the prompt, type 'livecd 2', login as root (with password: root) and run:

{assuming your Linux partition is hda1)

# mkdir /mnt/hda1 (creates the mount point /mnt/hda1)
# mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 (mount the linux partition)
# chroot /mnt/hda1 (chroot to the installation on the hard drive{
# /sbin/liloconfig (rewrite LILO)

Then do:
# shutdown -r now
and remove the CD so it boots from the hard drive.


2. As for your second question, how are you creating the partition? (ie. are you doing it from the Linux install or the Windows installer?)

The easiest thing to do would be to delete the partition you created for Windows and let Windows do it itself during the installation. (Make sure to select the unformatted space and format it as FAT32 if you want to share data between the OSes).

However, as Windows overwrites any other bootloader with its own, after this you'll need to do the procedure I outlined above again.

Hope this helps.

1337_penguin

thank you very much !!!!
i can finally use my computer again, and have both linux and windows as operating system.
thanks !!!

The reason windows overwrote your mbr was that you do not have the option to tell windows to not install unlike Linux which you do have a choice. Also once you over wrote your mbr windows is incapable of booting linux. That is why you should always install windows first and linux last.