I Screwed Up Big

[UKMan]

Also i think that when the computer fires up, you should first go into the BIOS setup and make sure you have the "Boot from Floppy" as first option, with the CD preferably as second option. This will allow you to boot from the floppy disk without the computer looking for the start sector on the HDD - which is corrupt - or a CD. Then you can use the boot disks as mentioned above to do an F-disk and reformat before doing a fresh install. Just remember to change it back when you have installed the OS.

Hope this helps Mobboss01.

Peace
UKMan

[Sir_Loki]

You should definetly format your hdd again first (with the win98 bootdisk). Make sure your boot sequence is right, first Floppy then CD-ROM then your harddrive. With this boot sequence it should recognize the winXP bootable cd if there's no diskette in the diskette drive.

[b33fy]

I would be interested in the outcome of this Mobboss, a mate fu**ed up his ME XP dual boot system, tried reformatting with a win98 disk and lost a big chunk of his hard drive space as it couldn't see the NTFS partition. Returned the hard drive under warranty!!.

[mobboss01]

No need to insult someone who is trying to help you. How is he supposed to know exactly what your problem is when all you did rant your frustration. Don't take it out on him that you were the idiot who screwed up your computer. When you're knee deep in sh*t and need help, the least you can do is be nice.

Ok first of all, I didn't mean to be nasty, but with his statement, I felt insulted. I hope we can put that behind us. Of course, I consider many ppl on this board to be friends, but I suppose that under the stress of what happened, I may have overspoken. I am a firm believer in being fair, but the statement that he made gave me the impression that since he has Linux he is superior, and what I was doing was mere childs play.

[mobboss01]

Ok, the outcome was this...I wound up being able to boot from my CD by changing the boot config in BIOS (Thank God) which, in turn, allowed me to install XP Corp. I wasn't able to activate Pro, so I remembered to use the Corp XP and a Corp XP key to avoid being forced to activate the OS once in Windows with just the Pro edition. For the laptop, my files were gone and it all stemmed from a failure of Explorer loading. It told me to reformat the drive. I went to the web and there was suppossed to be a fix, but it didn't work. It all snowballed from there.

However, the upgrade was such a success I decided to reformat my HDD on my PC after creating a backup of my files, ie. music, video, and game data.

I used the XP Corp edition with the key after the reformat and was left with a clean install and fresh C drive. I have had no problems whatsoever since. My D drive was still in FAT32, so I installed partition magic and converted my D drive to NTFS. That was easy and a success. Now I am enjoying XP to the fullest on my laptop and PC.

[UKMan]

COOL - well done bro

[mobboss01]

Thanks UKMan and the rest that helped me cope and try new things throughout my tough time. I hope nothing like what happened to me happens to you.