Had xp, installed ubuntu, now missing operating system

I had xp running on my D400 laptop and wanted UBUNTU.

I messed up the install (only installed half the operating system) I cannot remember what program i used i think it was called UNETBI? something like that.

Anyway when i start my laptop i get 'MISSING OPERATING SYSTEM'

I installed slax to my usb drive and accessed/backed up my files within windows.

I am wondering how i can change the boot.ini file from the windows area so that it will boot ok again?

It will not let me edit the file from within slax, only read.

Please help

Thanks alot.

Boot into the Recovery Console with your XP disk and check this (http://icrontic.com/articles/repair_windows_xp) guide out.

You can ditch the chkdsk though, save yourself some time ;).

thanks for the quick reply :)

ONLY problem is i have no cd drive on the dell d400 :(

I could get hold of an external next week but id prefer to leave that as a last resort (so i can maybe learn something)

Make an image of the CD and put it on a thumb drive (assuming your BIOS will allow you to boot off it).

ah only 256mb :(

:P Welp unless theres a utility out there I don't know of off hand that'll fit on your thumb drive or you have a Recovery Partition on the HDD, I'm not sure of what you can do, sorry.

ok, well thanks for the help anyway.

Looks like im gona have to format

:( Maybe someone else will have a suggestion.

Use the Windows XP setup floppy disks (6 of them) to boot into Recovery Console. After that proceed as normal.

the d400 has no floppy drive :(

Surely theres another way?

I was prepared to laugh if you had a floppy drive in that beast with no CD drive. You can pick up a 1GB thumb drive for a few bucks. That'd probably be the cheapest route for you to go.

lol :(

i cannot format until next week so i only have family pc to mess about on or slax which is annoying.

I dont suppose anyone would be able to walk me through installing the Dell 1450 Broadcom WIFI drivers on my D400 under slax would they?

I have found instructions online but each are just a little above my unix knowledge. It also makes it that little more difficult using slax off my pen drive.

Apparently i need to use a program called ndiswrapper which i have but i have no idea how to install or use. I have to put this into my root directory everytime i load up slax as it does not save my settings.

I also have the .ini and .sys windows driver files for my card already i just dont know how to put 1 and 1 together :)

Laptop with no internet = pointless

Thanks all for your suggestions so far.

OK. So you can boot into some form of Linux via USB?

When you played with Ubuntu, then you hopefully messed up only the primary bootloader. You can use Linux to install another one.

Do you have Lilo on that Slax thing?

You could fix up a minimal Lilo config file:

boot = /dev/hda
timeout = 1
default = win
vga = normal
label = win
other = /dev/hda1


And then install lilo using this config file.

You coud install Grub too, but then you would need a partition that Grub knows how to read..

hi

Thanks alot for your help but im too much of a noob to understand it :(

Im brand new to linux but am willing to learn. I believe slax uses LILO and ive looked into what this is but i am unsure how to add or change anything if you could point us in the right direction.

This might be useful..

My setup under mnt

floppy (dnt exist)
hda1 (windows)
hda2(linux ubuntu that went wrong)
live (not sure maybe the swap thing?)
sda1_removable (usb stick with slax)

**UPDATE**

ok i found out that it should be in /etc/lilo.conf which it wasnt

so i created it...

im in the process of writing the config now.....

but do not know exactly what to put in it? ALSO will it save when i reboot?

ok so i figured out how to make it save when i reboot.
i then created this lilo.conf file in /etc/ and used the code posted above.
it did not work :(
well it just booted back into slax so i assume it didnt.

LILO doesn't use the config file on the fly. It installs itself based on the config file.

So every time you edit the config, you have to run "lilo" (or "/sbin/lilo") to reinstall with the new settings.

just to close the thread, i got hold of the external cd drive, formatted, installed xp, installed ubuntu and all is well.