Getting XP Back

mpic92 · 08-11-2007, 06:10 PM

I have a nice laptop, that runs Windows XP Professional.

I have a friend who hates Windows and Macs, and is a big Linux fan. I asked him to help me make a Linux boot disc to try it out, but as soon as I take out the disc, be able to boot back into Windows. Well, he helped me make the disc and I tried it, and Gentu Linux worked fine off the disc, but when I restarted with the disc out, Windows failed to start. I tried changing the boot order and everything. All I get is a blinking "-" in the top left corner. Can anyone help me fix this? When I was using Linux, no processes occurred that would have wiped the hard drive or installed Linux... I hit a couple things using the Terminal application, but no serious actions seemed to occur.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Camper · 08-11-2007, 09:34 PM

Boot off your Windows XP CD and Press R for recovery console when your prompted. Here are a list of recovery console commands:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d....mspx?mfr=true
Fixboot and Fixmbr might be your best bet. You might need to do a chkdsk also.

mpic92 · 08-12-2007, 04:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Camper

Boot off your Windows XP CD and Press R for recovery console when your prompted. Here are a list of recovery console commands:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d....mspx?mfr=true
Fixboot and Fixmbr might be your best bet. You might need to do a chkdsk also.

Thanks for your reply.

The laptop didn't come with an XP CD. However, it's less than a year old and is still under warranty if that makes a difference.

20thCenturyBoy · 08-12-2007, 07:56 AM

It didn't come with a recovery disk or anything? That's weird. You should call up HP and demand the disk. Technically, they have to give you one.

I don't really know what to do without the XP disk. What you could do is install the Linux you tested out. That would give you a boot loader and would probably get you back into Windows.

Camper · 08-12-2007, 03:16 PM

You might have a recovery partition on the hard drive that you can access on boot up by pressing a key such as "F3" when booting up. However this might erase all your data. You could barrow someone else's CD as long as it the same version and use it to access the recovery console. They have the Windows setup on the floppies but since your using a laptop you may not have a floppy drive. You might be able to find a CD with the recovery console on it. Google it.

08-11-2007, 06:10 PM	#1 (permalink)
mpic92 Silver Member Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: MA Posts: 191	Getting XP Back I have a nice laptop, that runs Windows XP Professional. I have a friend who hates Windows and Macs, and is a big Linux fan. I asked him to help me make a Linux boot disc to try it out, but as soon as I take out the disc, be able to boot back into Windows. Well, he helped me make the disc and I tried it, and Gentu Linux worked fine off the disc, but when I restarted with the disc out, Windows failed to start. I tried changing the boot order and everything. All I get is a blinking "-" in the top left corner. Can anyone help me fix this? When I was using Linux, no processes occurred that would have wiped the hard drive or installed Linux... I hit a couple things using the Terminal application, but no serious actions seemed to occur. Any help would be much appreciated. __________________ New HP dv9000t Laptop: Genuine Windows XP Professional Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo processor T7200 (2.0 GHz) 17.0" WSXGA+ BrightView Widescreen (1680x1050) 512MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) Go 7600 2.0GB DDR2 SDRAM (2x1024MB)

08-11-2007, 09:34 PM	#2 (permalink)
Camper Diamond Member Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: /dev/null Age: 23 Posts: 1,232	Boot off your Windows XP CD and Press R for recovery console when your prompted. Here are a list of recovery console commands: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d....mspx?mfr=true Fixboot and Fixmbr might be your best bet. You might need to do a chkdsk also. __________________ Dell Inspiron 530 Q6600 Quad 3gb RAM ATI Radeon HD4670 500GB HD

08-12-2007, 03:16 PM	#5 (permalink)
Camper Diamond Member Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: /dev/null Age: 23 Posts: 1,232	You might have a recovery partition on the hard drive that you can access on boot up by pressing a key such as "F3" when booting up. However this might erase all your data. You could barrow someone else's CD as long as it the same version and use it to access the recovery console. They have the Windows setup on the floppies but since your using a laptop you may not have a floppy drive. You might be able to find a CD with the recovery console on it. Google it. __________________ Dell Inspiron 530 Q6600 Quad 3gb RAM ATI Radeon HD4670 500GB HD

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08-12-2007, 07:56 AM	#4 (permalink)
20thCenturyBoy Silver Member Join Date: Feb 2007 Posts: 102	It didn't come with a recovery disk or anything? That's weird. You should call up HP and demand the disk. Technically, they have to give you one. I don't really know what to do without the XP disk. What you could do is install the Linux you tested out. That would give you a boot loader and would probably get you back into Windows.