Hey there,

Alright, dunno if this is complicated or not, but the problem seems beyond my level (hence my registration and this being my first post). What happened was, I wanted to install Linux, possibly partition a portion of hard drive space and run both, except the problem is when I was running Windows..I partitioned to some unknown partition that is a very miniscule amount of hard drive space (and nothing installed). Difficult to describe, but when I boot up it says "Disk Read Error" if I try to load the main hard drive. I have an EBOOK hard drive which I can connect through USB, and if I select this as my boot up option through my XP BIOS it says "Invalid partition" (fittingly). I cannot boot up my computer because of this problem, and I know what it is but I seem unable to get into my computer at all to fix it. I do not have XP installation CD currently and I've been having difficulty transferring Debian, which I've downloaded from another computer, to mine. I dunno if it's because I haven't done it right or the hard drive is just ruined. Anyways, thanks for reading gotta close thisf or now...

If you have a 1gig pendrive formatted as fat32 and access to another computer. You can make a bootable linux usb with
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

Also, you will want to put something like Ubuntu LiveCD on that USB stick. If you are not familiar with Linux, Debian is a bad idea.

If you want to save your xp then stop and tell us. We may be able to fix that and then work on the linux.

I don't actually care if I have to reformat the computer's hard drive (Cor not. In fact that was part of the goal in the end. So I can install XP again and then Linux, or Linux and then XP; however I do not have the XP software that I need, or at least I cannot find it. I think being that Linux is the cheapest (it's pretty much free) it's the best way to go to at least get my computer up and running. (Remember, C: is currently down for the count. I may require a reformat in my opinion to solve the problem to begin with. If not, I still don't really care; I'd prefer reformatting really.) I've already transferred what I need to the external USB hard drive (E I mentioned earlier. Formatting E: is something I don't want to do, but possibly using it to install the software to C: might be my best solution here if I can do that without formatting. Or, I may get a Ubuntu CD from a friend of mine or something like that. However, I downloaded the debian software and it's on E: however the problem is that C: is partitioned to essentially absolutely nowhere because I guess I accidentally created a partition of 200 MB that had nothing on it and somehow caused that partition to be the priority when I was trying to change how much space I could allow it to have in XP (it was really dumb on my part) so it will say "Disk Error" and force me to restart every single time if I try to boot through C: and my only option is to change the boot order through the BIOS to E: or possibly D: (the CD-ROM drive which I think I will get something for). Ok well I hope this gives food for thought, I appreciate all the consideration for what to do with my problem.

Edit: Oh yeah, I downloaded Debian to E:, the external USB drive but I can't get it to work when booting through that because it says "invalid partition" if I attempt booting up to the USB drive. I may not have done it correctly, however. Maybe something I need to do with the files or something?

As far as the XP problem goes ... If you go to microsoft.com, and use their live support (opens a little chat window and a customer rep. will take your problem) and explain you are the admin of your PC and have lost your disc, the can do a remote wipe/fresh install, but being the stingy stuck up people they are ... They will charge for this. I recently got a laptop from a friend and wanted to wipe the drive for space, and I have my product key so I talked to microsoft and that is the solution they gave me. (reason I now am downloading ubuntu) I dunno if this is much help to you, but it's worth a shot ... Good luck :-D