Boot grub error 21: how can I uninstall pclinuxos from my laptop?
 

I am a newbie to linux and on the encouragement of my brother decided to try out a few distros. I have tried numerous distros and none of them wanted to install on my computer (I ran into problems with LinuxMint and Fedora 8). So I was happy when the installation for PClinuxOS went through with no problem (so I thought). I installed it on a external hard drive.

When I rebooted my laptop I got an error message:
GRUB Loading stage1.5. GRUB loading, please wait... Error 21

I've searched EVERYWHERE on the internet looking for a solution. Either the solution didn't work or someone gave an answer so technical that it was useless for me when trying to decipher it.

So now, not only do I not have pclinuxos on my computer it overwrote my windows xp master boot record, so I can't boot up into Windows either. I don't have my Windows installer CD (I'm going to try to borrow one) so I feel stuck. I can only use my computer when I boot PClinuxOS from the live CD. I feel like I broke my computer. I thought I was being cautious since I was using an external hard drive. I figured Windows wouldn't be affected.

Basically I want to figure out how to get rid of error 21 OR just uninstall PCLinuxOS (which I don't know how to do).

Please, I am DESPERATE for help. I'm so frustrated that if I didn't need this computer I would just throw it away and buy another one. So if anyone out there understands my problem please help me.

Please explain your solution in the simplest terms possible, without skipping steps. I know next to nothing about Linux or how to troubleshoot it. Thanks in advance for any help.

Go get any Windoze (XP/Win2k ???) install CD and boot it - hit <r> (for recovery console) when it says so. When you get in, type fixmbr
Reboot after taking the CD out - Windoze should boot as before.

In future just use the PCLOS CD as a liveCD (no install) until you get comfortable with Linux.