demonstrius

I once had a computer that had windows xp home edition. Unfortunately, I installed Gentoo Linux onto my computer and now I have no feaking idea of how to reinstall my good-ole windows xp. Please, please, help me out in my horrible problem.

PS: I am not familiar with advanced computer terms so please be word friendly

Bartender

OK, first thing is you gotta calm down. People don't think well when they're panicking. To legally reinstall Windows you need a valid key code (that shiny metallic sticker somewher on your pc) and a copy of Windows. DO you have a "Recovery CD" or genuine Windows CD?
Just reinstall Windows. It'll happily erase Linux completely. Well, it's supposed to anyway. We're having a weird situation in sluggo's thread. But 99.9999% of the time you simply let Windows install and Linux will be gone.

Fox

Well, if all you did was delete the partition (and you were using GRUB before, installed to the Master Boot Record), then all you really have to do is boot with a non-OEM XP disk and do the fixmbr command. Then, use fdisk to set the windows partition active again. This of course only applies if you know you had an xp partition that went down with the ship.

Otherwise, easiest thing to do would be to remove all the partitions and start over with a clean install of windows.

demonstrius

Okay, I put my windows xp disc, whether its oem or normal I'm not sure. When it gets to this place in the startup menu it says building dmi:
verifying dmi pool:
Boot Disc:
Boot Disc:
Then it says something about me needing to put in a system disc. I put in my xp disc and then it says setup is checking your hardware. Then the screen goes blank. At this point, I feel really hopeless.

PS: I installed gentoo by putting my Live CD in and then in started up gentoo. Everytime I want to use my pc, I need to put in the gentoo disc. Is this the wrong way to install or not?

Fox

Sounds like it botched something up when it went to install to the boot record.

If you want to wipe everything clean, you can download my favorite LiveCD manager, GParted. (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php)

This will allow you to clear out all partitions (effectively deleting everything) so that you can start over.

If you have nothing you'd like to keep on the computer, that is the path I would recommend taking. Just pop the cd in, start it up and load GParted. It'll give you a graphical view of all your partitions, and allow you to delete/resize/edit them.

Edit: make sure you have the proper windows disks to to an installation.

demonstrius

Oh crap! Are you saying that the only way to fix up my computer is to format it?! Darn it!

Well is there possibly another way?

Oh yeah it would be really nice if someone could tell me how to set up the network for gentoo for the time being

demonstrius

Ok I decided to get the gparted thing
Ok so when I turn on my pc after all the phoenix bios stuff, a grey screen appears, what should I do now?
If you like a faster way to contact me is by my sn for aim which I will tell you if you pm me

demonstrius

Important Question: How can I access the command prompt for Gentoo?

Fox

Hey, I got your PM, but I didn't see you as online with AIM.

Before we go any further, let's clear a few things up.

Are you dual booting a copy of windows on this computer that you'd like to keep (or, alternatively, are there partitions on this computer you'd rather not delete)?

If all you have on there now is Gentoo, it would be moderately difficult to install XP over top of it. It's possible to do, but I think it would be much easier to just back up the stuff you need and clear it out.

If you're not sure what you did, boot up the GParted cd, choose the first option, and then after it's done booting to the graphical interface, load up the partitioning software. If you see any NTFS partitions, then you still have windows stuff on there.

Edit: I'm CFS2Pilot on AIM if you want to talk; I'll be on a bit more tonight, but I'm going to sleep soon.

demonstrius

Okay I'm pretty sure I'm not dual booting. But what is for sure I had xp on my computer. When I go on gparted it allows me to use a usb device. Can I use this to save all my stuff and if so how?