Puppy is beautiful!

Booting, installing, newbie
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fossiili
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Puppy is beautiful!

#1 Post by fossiili »

I'm a 73 years old grandpa who has started learning Linux. I have tryed some 5-10 distros. For some reason my computer seems to be difficult to configure. But with Puppy 1.0.8 and Puppy 109CE I have not had problems.

Recently I was trying to get Simply Mepis to accept my PNY GeForce (nVidia) 6200 card and ViewSonic VA902-2 19" LCD but could not use the LCD with its native resolution. With Puppy I can use my LCD as it ought to.

After Mepis I started to install Fedora Core 5 from Linux Magazine June 2006. Everything seemed to go well, Fedora even recognized bouth nVidia 6200 and ViewSonic VA902, but when after installing starting Fedora while loading GRUB on stage 1.5 it stopped for the sake of error 15 :shock:

So Fedora did the worst possible thing to me: I can not start my computer with it's reliable WindowsXP!

But thank's God and some good people I have Puppy liveCD's :D

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sunburnt
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#2 Post by sunburnt »

Hi fossiili; This is exactly why I don't use any boot loaders that alter the boot sectors of the HD.
Unless Linux is the only thing on the HD (of course), there HAS to be a boot loader of some sort.
I've known too many disasters that came from them, they work well but corruption's possible.

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BlackAdder
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#3 Post by BlackAdder »

Welcome to PuppyLand fosiili,
There have been some posts about modifying WinXP's boot.ini file. It is possible that Fedora scrunched that file, causing WinXP not to boot. You could have a look at the file via Puppy and see if it has an extra entry pointing pointing to a non-existent Fedora. If so, there is advice on the net about getting WinXP to re-build the master boot record.
In the meantime....Enjoy Puppy!

kirk
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#4 Post by kirk »

fossiili,

If you have a windows boot floppy, boot up with that and type:

fdisk /mbr

That will remove grub from your MBR. There's a space between the k & /

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MU
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#5 Post by MU »

Kirk, I think XP has a tool fixmbr , but I am not shure?
I know fdisk /mbr from Win98, but don't know if it still works with XP?

If it is XP professional (not OEM), then you could boot from the CD. It shall have an option to fix the bootrecord.
OEM-users are not allowed to repair their damaged systems :lol:
Praise the bill... ;)

Mark

kirk
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#6 Post by kirk »

I've use a 98 boot disk to fix the MBR on my XP pro. Well, it's not mine, it belongs to the company I work for. If you have the CD it's might be worth a try.

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fossiili
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#7 Post by fossiili »

Thank you all kind people! I'm not in panic becouse I have connection to Internet as you see. I know there are methods to repare WinXP installation so I can continue playing for ex. War Plan Orange and other nice games. Recently I wanted to repare the Grub to get Fedora startting. I have had problems with Fedora previously, when I tryed to install Fedora Core 4 the installer (or I) confused my computer totally. I had to reinstall Windows and everything else also.
This time ... I contact Fedora folk asking their help. :!:

cthisbear
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XPs Rebuild Command

#8 Post by cthisbear »

I hope this helps - but I couldn't remember the
Langer Report site. Sorry that it's long.
Personally I use an advanced Bart PE
so I lose nothing and reghost my drives.

XPs Rebuild Command

Langa Letter: XP's Little-Known 'Rebuild' Command

There's an easy fix for "Missing HAL.DLL," "Invalid Boot.Ini," and several other fatal startup errors, Fred Langa says.

* Boot from your XP Setup CD and enter the Recovery Console
* Run "Attrib -H -R -S" on the C:\Boot.ini file
* Delete the C:\Boot.ini file
* Run "Bootcfg /Rebuild"
* Run Fixboot

http://www.informationweek.com/story/sh ... =185301251

It usually takes a lot to stop XP in its tracks. Even in those rare cases when the operating system is badly damaged, you'll usually at least have the option of booting into the "Last Known Good" configuration, or to Safe Mode. But sometimes, especially after major hardware failures or part swaps (e.g. moving the operating system to a new hard drive), or after problems with dual- or multi-booting software, you may encounter seemingly intractable errors such as "Missing or corrupt HAL.DLL," "Invalid Boot.Ini," or "Windows could not start..."

These problems can seem hard to get past. For example, the first time I got a "Cannot find \Windows\System32\hal.dll" error message, I thought I'd be clever and replace the missing file via a simple Copy command from the Recovery Console. I booted the PC, switched to the \Windows\System32 folder, and there it was: The HAL.DLL was already there. It wasn't missing at all. Why couldn't the operating system find it?

I tried copying a fresh version of the file to \Windows\System32. No dice. I tried renaming it all uppercase and then all lowercase. Nothing. I put a copy in the root directory. No effect. I tried everything I could think of, but nothing worked.

Then--doh!--I stopped thrashing and did what I should have done initially: I dug into the Microsoft Knowledge Base and learned about XP's built-in Rebuild command. It can often easily fix "Missing HAL" and similar problems in just a minute or two. If you know about this command and how to use it, you can potentially save yourself hours and hours of manually reinstalling or rebuilding a failed operating system.

The Rebuild command--technically a software "switch" used with XP's Bootcfg tool--automatically searches a hard drive for valid startup information and files, letting you choose the correct ones. This has the effect of removing and repairing any references to whatever invalid, missing, or corrupt startup information was preventing normal booting.

As is true of so many technical topics, this one actually takes far longer to describe than to implement, so please don't be put off by any seeming complexity in this discussion. Once you know the process, it's actually quite straightforward and takes only a minute or two to run to completion.

For example, if you already have some knowledge of the commands involved, many "Missing or corrupt HAL.DLL," "Invalid Boot.Ini," or "Windows could not start..." problems can be fixed with these five shortcut steps:

* Boot from your XP Setup CD and enter the Recovery Console
* Run "Attrib -H -R -S" on the C:\Boot.ini file
* Delete the C:\Boot.ini file
* Run "Bootcfg /Rebuild"
* Run Fixboot

It really can be as simple as that!

But the first few times you try this repair, it makes sense to use the slightly longer but more certain "official" method, as outlined by Microsoft in a number of separate Knowledge Base articles. To save you time, we'll concatenate the instructions here.

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Nathan F
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#9 Post by Nathan F »

There's an ongoing issue here with Fedora, actually. It did exactly the same thing to me when I installed fedora Core4 last year, and from my searches on the net I found that I was not the only one to have the problem. So give those Fedora zealots some hell about it, okay?

Of course, in my case at the time I didn't mind at all. I was only keeping Windows to pacify my wife, and after I 'couldn't fix it' for a couple weeks she ended up liking Linux better anyway. So from a certain point of view this was doing me a favor. I bet some of the Fedora developers are secretly thinking this, too. Hey, we trashed somebody's Windows installation, allright! I mean, how terrible.

Nathan
Bring on the locusts ...

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fossiili
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#10 Post by fossiili »

MU wrote:Kirk, I think XP has a tool fixmbr , but I am not shure?
I know fdisk /mbr from Win98, but don't know if it still works with XP?
Mark
Thank you all! Now I recovered WindowsXP Home by typing in Recovery console "/fixmbr". Only that was needed :idea:

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