Help! Help help help help.

Okay, as you might have seen in my other Linux thread, I was having trouble getting it installed and booted. Well, I reinstalled. And with the floppy boot disk, I can boot into it (and am currently posting from my Linux partition on my second hard drive).

BUT, I can't boot into XP where anything I care about is!!! Aaaargh!!

When I try, all I get is an "L" and a flashing cursor. It doesn't accept input at all.

I installed LILO boot loader on the MBR. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to boot into Linux that way, but I was reasonably confident that it wouldn't hurt my XP partition seeing as the help said that if Linux is going to be on the same disk as 2000 or XP to install it on the MBR.

Oh, please tell my I'm not out of luck and that I can get back to my XP (and no, I'm and idiot and I don't have an XP boot floppy). :crying:

When does your class start?:p

Cancel red alert, crisis averted. I was able to use the XP setup disk to run the repair utility and repair the MBR.

Well, I gave my heart a nice rest from it's duties, as it stopped for a couple minutes there. Perhaps I should put the backup software I recently installed to use sometime soon. (Actually, I've already burnt all the digital photos, which are the only files that I would REALLY be upset if they disappeared. But the thought of rebuilding my system from the ground up is not a plesant one).

Ignore me....just happy all is well. :)

Couldn't the Linux installation read the XP partition? I thought Linux could mount NTFS partitions, at least read-only.

THis is why my Linux box is separate from mw Windows Box. ;)

Originally posted by Andrew
Couldn't the Linux installation read the XP partition? I thought Linux could mount NTFS partitions, at least read-only. Okay. I'm Linux-illiterate. I'm installing it because it came with the textbook I got for a Linux class that will hopefully leave me Linux-literate.

But I think there was more to it than that. While I was up in Linux, I took a look at the hardware list. It was listing the XP drive as just a plain old FAT partition. So it was mounted, but I don't think it could access the file system.

Linux When Installed along side of Windows can Read All Versions of NTFS, as well as Write to all Versions of Fat. Unfortunatly in order to read and write to the Fat Partition you would have had to set a Mount Point for the Partition. If you used the Auto Partition function that most NEWER versions of linux come with it should have mounted it as /windows or /MNT/Windows if you decided to use the Advanced functions then you would have had to set the Mount Point Manually.

Hope this helps

Joel
In formation System Coordinator
HMLA267