Reloading windows on a laptop with Linux - problems (1 Viewer)

[Jeff_Standley]

I am trying to load windows back on to a laptop and can not get it to run. I put the disc in and it will boot from disc. It says booting and then it just stays in that screen.
How do I get windows back on it?
I am running Fedora right now.

 

[Mike Selis]

In order to provide advice, can you please provide Brand name and model number, the OS you are planning to restore, if you are using restore discs from the manufacturer, and any other details that reflect a change from the original configuration?

 

[Tekara]

sounds like a bad disk, the windows disk should be able to load no matter what's installed on the hard drive.

Now to install windows though, you'll have to set up some partition that you can format into ntfs for windows to go onto. The disk manager that you can use in the windows install I think makes you redo the entire hard drive.

 

[Jeff_Standley]

I have two different wondows XP discs and I believe they work fine. I am running an old HP laptop with a AMD duron chip. I will post the model number when I get home.

 

[Al.Anderson]

I'm pretty sure your boot record got hosed up. (I remember similar systems from experiments I did years ago.) When you installed Linux you chose to update the "main" boot record instead of one on a separate drive partition. I think you'll have to re-format the drive.

Please, don't take my word for it, it's been awhile - but you might want to seach the Linux forms for boot record.

 

[Andrew Pratt]

It shouldn't matter what's on the hard drive though as its booting from the CD. During the install you'll have the oppertunity to wipe the harddrive and reformat it as you please. Do you have a floppy drive on the laptop? If so try booting from an old win95/98 boot or install floppy disc.

 

[Jeff_Standley]

I'll try that, thanks.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

If you need to rewrite the master boot record, it can be done fairly easily with a DOS/Win 9x bootdisk - you can get one of those from bootdisk.com if you don't have one. You do need a floppy drive in the computer though.

Just boot to DOS and run the Fdisk program to rewrite the MBR by typing: fdisk /mbr

There are other ways but that one is free, easy and fairly quick.

 

[Mike_J_Potter]

Or if you don't have a floppy boot off of your windows xp cd and goto into recovery console and type in fixmbr. Worked for me when removing Linux from a dual boot config. Make sure any data you want to keep is deleted then use the recovery console to delete all partitions off the drive. Use the diskpart command. All the info you need is in this link. This may be the only way to get the linux partitions off, I have had issues before with this.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;314058