Trouble booting XP

polyphonics · #1 July 11th, 2006, 09:25 PM

Hey,

Okay...here is the deal. Last year I got a new computer and decided that I would just experiment with my old laptop and put Linux (fedora core) on it since I wouldn't need to use it anymore for anything just to play around with it. The only thing I would be using it for, after all, was internet for travel right...wrong. Turns out I went a bit too fast and my wireless card (linksys) doesn't work with Linux. Well, now I need the laptop for school and was wondering what I can do to get it working. There is no way that I can keep linux on it and use my wireless card because there is no driver for the linksys card that linux supports. So I have resorted to having to put XP back on it =(.
Well...the other night I was going to get this done but I can't seem to install windows. I put the XP disc in, booted it up (and changed the boot sequence) and it recognized the cd but after it said "Setup is detecting hardware configuration" (or something along those lines-the first thing it said) it just went to a black screen. So I tried to do it again when the computer is booted and it wouldn't open the setup.exe or the autorun.inf. So what do I need to do to put windows back on my system?? Thanks!

-Warren

**kage** · #2 July 11th, 2006, 09:58 PM

The wireless issue can easily be resolved using ndiswrapper. It allows you to use the windows driver (specifically, the .inf file within the driver) for your card within linux.

Aside from that, you would be best off asking how to setup windows in the windows forum, as this really has nothing to do with linux other then the fact that linux is installed. Linux being installed on your hard drive -will not- prevent you from installing XP, or any release of window, to my knowledge.

-kage

perigrin · #3 July 12th, 2006, 12:56 AM

Try getting hold of xfdisk. This should allow you to completely delete the Linux partitions. As Kage stated, there should be no reason that you can't install XP on a system that has Linux installed as long as you can get to the XP partitioning screen. By the sound of what you are saying, the XP setup program is not allowing this to happen, so the only thing I can think of is starting off with a clean slate. Good luck.

polyphonics · #4 July 12th, 2006, 01:26 AM

Okay, so I downloaded xfdisk on my windows computer, put it on a 1.0 GB flash drive and put it on my Linux computer...it isnt seeming to open. When I try to open the file it isnt opening??

bAdWaYz · #5 July 12th, 2006, 08:44 PM

If the laptop can boot from floppy or cd why not just use a boot disk then boot use fdisk and del any non DOS partitions or any partitions for that matter then just stick in the Windows cd and do a clean install?

polyphonics · #6 July 12th, 2006, 10:02 PM

The problem is that it isn't fully booting from a boot CD. It is recognizing the CD and then just blacks out.

perigrin · #7 July 25th, 2006, 01:51 AM

Xfdisk is designed to work the same as a dos boot disk, it has to run at boot time. Try copying the program to a cd and boot from there or, if necessary, run a dos boot disk, choose to start with cd support, change directories to your cd rom drive and type xfdisk at the command prompt. The application should start.