Hello

I have a laptop that came with WinXP Pro. I recently formatted 2 partitions which contained RedHat Linux, and the SWAPSPACE. Normally the boot-up screen would go to GRUB and have the option to choose from booting Red Hat or DOS (WinXP).

Now that I have formatted those 2 partitions, it does not boot up WindowsXP automatically. It only goes to the GRUB prompt? It goes to

GRUB>

There are command lines which I'm really confused with.
What should I do? I'm worried that I lost all my information in WINXP.

Thank you


Please help

What did you use to format?
MS fdisk, Linux fdisk, redhat setup disk druid?
If you need your WinXP back ASAP, try booting to a recovery console with the XP cd and then running fixmbr. That will reset the boot loader to ntldr.
If your partition is screwed, don't fear, it's easy to recover with the right software - unless you did a full format and installed Linux over the Windows partition.
I had a "GRUB>" problem before and it turned out to be a problem with my RAID IDE controller and a hard drive. Incompatible hardware may be the problem.

Good Luck

I used Partition Magic , I forgot from which company. It runs on WinXP. So what is it exactly that I should get? A WinXP Bootable CD? I tried that, and it tries to install a new WinXP. I didnt continue from the initial screen because I was scared that will already format. I also cannot use a boot disk because my laptop doesnt have a disk drive.

I dont think I put Linux over my windows or vice-versa, because i had those two on different partitions to begin with. My linux worked before, i just wanted to get rid of it and put Mandrake Linux instead of RedHat.

What should I do?

Thanks a lot

let the winxp installation disk boot up, right before you install it (but after the user license agreement) it should give you an option "Press R for Recovery Console" or something similar to that. Then you'll have to log in to the windows installation with the admin password and run fixmbr.

I got into the recovery console for Windows and I ran fixmbr. But I didn't choose to continue on fixmbr because it said it might damage the partitions, do you want to continue? I choose no. Should I choose yes?

Sorry, I'm just very scared because I dont know whats going on.


Thanks a lot

If you can get to the grub prompt try typing inand it should answer
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
then typeThat should get you into Windows and you should be able to fix your bootloader. I don't know how to do that and I've no intention of learning. Good luck

When I typed in

root (hd0.0)

it came out : Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x12


Then I typed in

chainloader +1
boot

I think then it went to try to boot to Windows , but I ended up getting a Hard Drive error Blue screen.


Should I just use the "fixmbr" from before ?

Thanks

Yea... Use the recovery console from the Xp disk.... It won't or rather shouldn't screw up your partition tables.

Thanks, it works normal now.

I'm thinking of installing Linux onto Microsoft Virtual PC. Has anyone ever tried that?

I've tried installing different type of Linux on new partitions and they always seem to get stuck booting up. So I want to try if this will work.