Hey guys...

I have an HP laptop, and I bought a 100GB hard drive for it a while ago, with the intent to dual-boot it. I had Fedora Core 4 installed on it, no problem, but didn't use it because I couldn't configure the wireless. So, I decided to pugrade to FC5. I downloaded the 5 CDs (the DVD would never boot, so I threw it away, and downloaded the CDs, rather than spending hours figuring it out.

At any rate, I must have burned the wrong image onto CD 2... It said that it was the incorrect disc. So I was stuck, halfway through the install. I left it on for the night, thinking I'll have someone download it and burn it for me, and I'll start it up in the morning. Well, the laptop overheated and turned off (I guess it overheated anyways). Now, when I turn on the computer, nothing will boot. Fedora Core 4 obviously won't since I deleted the old Linux partitions and started new, but Windows won't, either. I ran the Windows installer to repair it, but it still won't boot.

GRUB seems to load, but it only pulls up a command line, and I have no idea at all what to do at that point.

If you guys could help me out, that would be great. I'm at a loss as to what to do, and I have a lot of un-backed-up material on my hard drive (a big no-no... I now know why) that I don't want to lose, but not much is really irreplacable (photos, etc).

Thanks guys! I'm trying to get into Linux!

if you have a windows XP install CD, you can go to the repair ("DOS") screen and type in fixmbr and fixboot to get the MBR back to windows. (Be Careful though - it's easy to mess these up...)

What you could do is get another distro, install that over FC5 and configure GRUB correctly for that one? This would (in my eyes) be less risky as Windows often fudges the fixboot and fixmbr stuff all on it's own (at least in my experience).

I agree with the above post from xpromisex, fix the MBR first.

Now to help you out with the burning of the CD ISO, there is detailed information here :

http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/answers/LQ_ISO

Note the section on checking the MD5SUM. This is critical. That will tell you id the image to be burned matches the image on the server you download from. Way too often there are errors, and the image you have needs to be downloaded again.

Second, when you burn the image, run it at a slow speed, say x8, and don't do anything else on the system when you are doing the burning.

There are instructions to burn on different software on windoze, OS-X and linux. All work well,if you follow the recommendations, and you use reasonable media.

Once you have good CD's and you have backed up all your windoze data, then you can try a install.

I will concentrate on what you can do to boot the Windows since you have a Grub prompt.

As far as I am aware no workable PC system cannot be booted by a Grub prompt.

I believe your Windows to be in the first partition and your 100Gb disk is the only one in the system. I would therefore use the Grub prompt to get Grub to tell me what is in the hard disk by
If my guess is correct the 0 partition (Grub counts from 0) will be Partition type 7 indicating NTFS partition. Then theses lines in Grub prompt will boot up your Windows manually.
There is need to fix the Windows MBR if you have a Grub prompt.

Thanks guys, that was great response speed... lol.

I suppose my first step would be to repair the MBR. I tried using my old Fedora 4 CDs (that I know work) but the installer wouldn't load up. I tried the Ubuntu one I had as well, same story. What generally seems to happen is the main menu comes up (You know, the one that goes "To install Linux, press [ENTER]"

I am 99% sure the Windows partition is fine, because I ran the installer repair thing and got no errors or anything (so here's to hoping, eh?). I knew about the DOS repair function but didn't know how to use it properly.

After that, should I use a partitioning tool to wipe clean the other 30GB for the Linux stuff? I wasn't sure if that would cause the isntallers to fudge up, since I know turning off a computer during an OS install is a horrible thing to do... haha.

Okay - What you need to do is:


1) Partition the drive as you want it (if this is already done - you don't need to format the drive as most linux installations will do it for you when you install)
2) Install the linux distro onto the drive in question. Make SURE it is the drive in question!
3) Install and configure GRUB.

If you want to install linux, there is no reason to use Windows to fix the MBR, as GRUB will overwrite it when you install it again.

Okay, I'm not on FC5! Whoo!

I went ahead and fixed the MBR, just because it was not recognizing boot CDs... Not sure if that had anything to do with it or not, but it worked now.

Now, to just configure it all...