I installed linux ony my computer that had WinXP home on it and the 1st thing i was told to do was make a partition so i did and made it as a Primary partition then i installed linux and wasnt really paying attention to what the program was telling me and made it install as the Main boot as a Grub and now i cant get to WinXP and when i try to get to different OS's to get linux only shows Dos and Linux how do i get WinXP back to the main boot?

Select DOS - some distros call Windows DOS.

You can change what your distro calls it by editing grub.conf in Linux.

Breaking that up into sentences would help...

Anyway, when I installed RedHat 8 (forming a dual boot with Win98), I opted to install LILO as my boot loader (you chose GRUB). When I rebooted, LILO presented me with the same 2 options: Dos and Linux. Linux took me to RedHat (You didn't mention your Linux distro), and Dos took me to Windows. I'm not sure about how WinXP does things, and you also didn't say what happened when you tried Dos; it should take you to Windows, but if not, I'm sure someone else can help you.

BTW, if Dos does take you to Windows, you can edit your bootloader configuration file (/etc/grub.conf? it's /etc/lilo.conf for me, but I don't use GRUB) to show the proper names.

*edit- XavierP beat me to it

i tryed it and it actually loads dos not windows

What is your distro?

Could you copy and paste your grub.conf for us?

ok now i restated my computer and its telling me to instert correct boot disk and the right one is in there whats wrong with it know i havent changed anything

ok ignore last post now i got to dos and it says
Booting "dos"
rootnoverify (hd0,4)
chainloader +1
|

I really don't understand how if you only had WinXP installed, that your Dos option loads Dos. XP doesn't even use DOS anymore.

Can you access your XP partition from in Linux?

Post your /etc/fstab file and your grub.conf file as well.

i tryed it and it actually loads dos not windows

I'm not sure that's possible with Windows XP. With 95, 98, and Me, DOS was still the primary underlying operating system, but with 2000 and XP, there is no DOS. I'm not quite sure how your computer would manage to boot to an operating system that doesn't exist.

Booting "dos"
rootnoverify (hd0,4)
chainloader +1
|
is watit says it doesnt do anything after that

How did you do the install? Can you tell us how you partitioned your system, what you told your distro to do at the install stage and ehich distro you are using?

I wonder if you have overwritten XP and you are just left with a remnant......

i used partition magic pro 7.0 to make a new partition for linux and installed linux and know i cant get windowXP to loaded i madelinux the main boot i think and i cant find the windows boot loader now

ohh ya i still have the ntfs partition on the computer which has WindowsXP

Something has been naused up by the sounds of it. Which Linux did you install? Did you tell the installer to only use the new partition?

You may need touse a rescue cd to rescue your pc if you can only boot to dos and Linux will not start up. Pop in your distros cd and type linux rescue at the prompt.

Leseta- Okay, post the contents of your /etc/fstab file and your grub.conf. Maybe we can help you add an entry to Grub to allow you to boot XP. Also, browse the contents of that NTFS partition while booted into Linux, make sure you still have the Windows folder on it.

XavierP- Maybe he possibly resized the NTFS partition? I know that can really screw things up.