Re: Winders' problem...Can Linux help here ?

Michael Soibelman wrote:
Sorry in advance for not going directly to a Windoze newsgroup but I thought
someone here might help. Of course many of you know I don't use Windoze
and I am a Linux advocate/user/... I'm hoping there is a Linux solution
for this situation. A friend of mine has a Windows machine. He just
bought a new motherboard (ASUS) and swapped the old peripherals into this
setup. The two IBM hard drives are formatted with XP Pro. The second
drive just contains some backup files. So the MBR is on the first drive
(hda). Since the mobo is new and the owner just flashed it (BIOS) the MBR
does not want to boot up XP as it (XP cd)detects a change in the hardware.
Aborting !!! When I boot up to the XP CD it starts the usual loading of
system files and then it goes directly to the screen where it asks whether
it should boot directly to XP in Normal mode, Safe Mode, Safe Mode with a
console.... But I can not get it to go to the initial install screen where
it asks whether I want to install XP or Repair an existing install...

I can, however, get SuSE-10.2 to detect everything and resize the existing
Windows partition and format/install 10.2. I abort at this point as my
friend does not want to dual boot...yet ! So it is my belief that the MBR
must be deleted in order to get the Windows cd to get to the Install/Repair
option to fix the 'corrupted' MBR....

I do not want to risk loosing any of the data on the drives so I want to be
certain that whatever method I use to remedy this situation works... I
know how to boot to a floppy and use a bootable MS floppy to run FDISK but
I do not have such a floppy. I do own two old version of Windows (98 and
2000 Pro) but I do not have any computer with them installed...

1. How can I create a Windows boot floppy without installing Windows ??
Can I just copy the files (from the Windows disk)to the floppy in SuSE ?

2. Is there a way to use any Linux tools to delete the MBR ?

3. Am I correct in assuming that deleting the MBR and running the Repair
option is the correct course of action to take ?? The Blue Screen of (you
idiot, why are you using this crappy OS in the first place) Failure states
that the Windows installation can not proceed as there has been a change in
hardware/disk drives........you must remove the drives before you
proceed.... seems to indicate that this (MBR) is the problem.

In conclusion I will state that even though my friend is not ready at this
time to try Linux helping him to get his computer working now can only help
to influence him to try it (Linux) at some point in the future. Some times
it takes a while to get a person to open there mind !!

Thanks.

Michael Soibelman

P.S. Forgot to mention that the XP Pro CD is an Upgrade CD. Don't know if
that is pertinent to this situation.

Sorry in advance but I not read all the posts here so this may have been
posted.

The problem here is that MS in there wisdom decided with XP to have you
activate your copy and part of the activation was that only 5 parts of
the system could get changed before activation was needed again.

So XP thinks that it is new machine so will need activating again.
But it would boot to allow this.. Best advise is to check MS forum.

Ram



.

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