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well one of my friends though it would be cool to boot linux fedora core 5 onto his laptop to see what it was like, and now it has screwed up his laptop and he cant reinstall windows, any ideas??

What do you mean by screwed up his laptop? Reinstalling Windows is easy. Just put the Windows CD in, reboot and follow the instructions. If you can say what the problem exactly is with Fedora, peeps can lend a hand here maybe.

i no installing windows is easy, but when u put the boot disc in it reads it as a boot disc then goes to a black screen for ages, he left the black screen for like an hour and it didnt do anything

Go into the BIOS there should be an option to do a low level format of the hard drive. Do that. It'll take a long time for it to be done though.

After you've done that install windows.

hes not really sure how to get into the bios with his laptop but he has formatted it with the linux disc and then tried windows and it still does not work

Hey im the guy whos laptop it is... I wouldnt have a clue how to get into BIOS from Linux's setup thingy lol.. Can anyone give a halfwit noob like me a step by step instruction on how to get windows back up and running?? any help would be appriciated!


Mark

hmmm. There should be a message to press a particular button the keyboard to go to "setup" or "bios" when you turn on your laptop.

I am not totally convinced that he has formatted the hard drive btw.

yeah tha messege dosnt come up

yeah the only thing i can figure out how to do is to boot up the laptop with the Fedora Core 5 instillation dvd disc in it. and then it gives me the options to re install FC 5 and formatting the hard drive at the same time... There isnt any options for BIOS when it turns on?...

Is the Windows CD clean? Make sure it is and try it again.

Yeah have done that several times... Also tried a different XP disc as well as the discs the BENQ laptop came with... With the BENQ OS disc it came with that is suppose to install windows XP it says its trying to install Windows 98 and then comes up with an error saying "The image you are attempting to install is not valid on this machine" or something similar...

You wouldnt know what make Hard Drive you have by any chance?

No idea...
Its 60GB and came built in with it 2 months ago... thats about all i Know?

Get cd #1 of Fedora and run the installer to the partitioning utility, format the drive as fat32, allow the partitioning to proceed, then exit the prcess before actually installing Fedora, just after the formatting is complete

Then try the Widows XP CD.

Its just one disc.. a dvd... but i am doing that now... and idea how to format it or whatever as a FAT32?

Its not the most friendly method, but try amd get the harddrive formatted as FAT 32 when it comes to partitoning in the installation process and remember to EXIT before it actually installs fedora.

Another option is to download SystemRescueCD HERE

I have never used it before but run qtparted on it .Get it to format you hard drive as fat32. This options seems to be easier.

Are you positive it doesnt show a BIOS/setup option during bootup? Its usually the first of second screen, boot up twice, one time repeatedly pressing F2, and the second time repeatedly hitting 'Del', those are the two most common options for entering the BIOS. If all else fails, format and then reinstall windows.

Possibly try THIS

I had the same problem a while back. FC5 messes up the master boot record. I had to download the Setup Disks for Floppy Boot Install.

Home edition: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...5-bd5afee126d8
Pro Edition: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...7-4fed408ea73f
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

Pick the appropriate version and run the program to format the floppies. Boot from your floppies.

Hope that helps. Worked for me.