[playme123]

Right here goes
Ive got hold of my dads pb 552 tower, it has win xp media centre on it.
However when you start it up it says ntldr is missing. He didnt have any recovery disk with it as there is a partition on the hd that has recovery stuff for you to burn to cd unfortunately donut dad didnt do it.
I can get recovery disk for pb for about £50 or I can take it in to loacal pc shop and get a clean install of xp for £50.
Right what I want to do is install ubuntu to a partition in the hard drive, clear everything else of it and leave the recovery partition there.
What is the easiest way of making a bootable cd to do this, what file system should I format the rest of the hd to ie ntfs or fat32 and how do I do that or will I have options in the bootable cd to do that.

Told you im being a pain in the but

[saikee]

You can buy a Linux magazine that supplies with free Live CD or DVD. That will solve the problem of needing an operating system to burn a bootable CD.

Just about any Linux Live CD will do your case. Slax, Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, Puppy, DSL,...

My suggestion is leave the original hard disk alone and try to run the Live CD for you immediate need as you can surf the internet, play the MP3 and access all the data in the XP disk. Some modern distros, like Slax from version 6.0.0 on, would actually mount all the Windows partitions as well as permitting you to write on them, while the majority would only read and not write NTFS partitions unless special program like ntfs-3g is loaded.

You can continue to save information to the XP disk, in your own folder, without affecting it being rescued later on.

I have a feeling that your XP may be still salvageable using any XP installation CD as long as it is a legal copy and has the product key to go with it if required. You can borrow a friend's XP installation to do the salvage job.

In the medium term I would suggest you to install and run Linux in an external USB hard disk or pen drive while trying to rescue the XP. This enable you to save all the Linux settings, access the XP data and have a full blow operating system for the daily use.

As a long term perspective I would recommend to clone the hard disk, put away the original for safe keeping and do whatever you need with the cloned copy.

A xp license is still a xp license you can use it forever for the machine. I wouldn't give away another £50 for the same thing just because I don't know how to rescue it with my present knowledge.

For cloning you will find a Live CD is all you need. The relevant steps are here

Depending on the amount of damage I would not be surprised if you load a XP installation CD, select "repair" and have a working XP again on the next reboot. Just seems a shame to throw a license away.

[playme123]

Originally Posted by saikee

You can buy a Linux magazine that supplies with free Live CD or DVD. That will solve the problem of needing an operating system to burn a bootable CD.

Just about any Linux Live CD will do your case. Slax, Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, Puppy, DSL,...

My suggestion is leave the original hard disk alone and try to run the Live CD for you immediate need as you can surf the internet, play the MP3 and access all the data in the XP disk. Some modern distros, like Slax from version 6.0.0 on, would actually mount all the Windows partitions as well as permitting you to write on them, while the majority would only read and not write NTFS partitions unless special program like ntfs-3g is loaded.

You can continue to save information to the XP disk, in your own folder, without affecting it being rescued later on.

I have a feeling that your XP may be still salvageable using any XP installation CD as long as it is a legal copy and has the product key to go with it if required. You can borrow a friend's XP installation to do the salvage job.

In the medium term I would suggest you to install and run Linux in an external USB hard disk or pen drive while trying to rescue the XP. This enable you to save all the Linux settings, access the XP data and have a full blow operating system for the daily use.

As a long term perspective I would recommend to clone the hard disk, put away the original for safe keeping and do whatever you need with the cloned copy.

A xp license is still a xp license you can use it forever for the machine. I wouldn't give away another £50 for the same thing just because I don't know how to rescue it with my present knowledge.

For cloning you will find a Live CD is all you need. The relevant steps are here

Depending on the amount of damage I would not be surprised if you load a XP installation CD, select "repair" and have a working XP again on the next reboot. Just seems a shame to throw a license away.

Ive tried to xp repair and it dont work, ive tried reinstalling xp but as soon as its formatted the hd it goes to shut down and when it reboots it goes back to the beginning the only xp disk that I have is a recovery cd for my fujitsu siemens pc the other copy I have is well let say a special copy

[saikee]

In case if you are not aware of every time your XP is connected to the Internet it talks to M$. At the same time M$ download whatever they have into you PC under the name of "updates".

Many OEM copies of the XP are sold to live and die with the machines they were installed. Any attempt to migrate such a license to another PC would end up spending hours and days of your life to fight a war you cannot possibly win because that is how M$ controls its products.

M$ systems, especially XP, are mostly attached and infected. Using a XP without the full support of the correct updates means a user can have it OS working happily one day and dropping stone dead on the next day.

The conclusion is unless you can sort out the license arrangement don't use this product as it will waste your life away.

When you are running a Linux using all the data recovered from the XP hard disk you may wonder what the fuss is all about.

[playme123]

Im thinking of just running ubuntu on this tower to be honest have spent 3 days trying to resolve the ntldr issue to no avail.
All this tower is going to do is be linked up to lcd tv and used for surfing and listening to music basically.
I have a vaild key on a sticker attached to the tower.
I have tried and tried to get to the partition but just cant get it going
So im really thinking now of wiping the hard drive and installing ubuntu to be honest

[saikee]

You can boot up ubuntu which is an installable Live CD now.

Click accessory, then terminal and check activate the partitioning program "cfdisk" by

sudo cfdisk /dev/sda

I assume you have a recent Ubuntu and have only one hard disk as all disks are now called sda if it is the first one.

You can use cfdisk to delete everything and create two partitions sda1 say anything above 10Gb and sda2 say 1Gb as a swap. You need to highlight "type" to select type 82 for a swap. Highlight "write", press return and re-confirm with a "yes" and the hard disk will be suitable for Ubuntu installation on a reboot.

You do not commit until you type "yes". Without highlighting "write" and press return the existing partition table will not be touched.

You should consider salvage data in the XP partition first and mount it in Ubuntu to access its content.

[playme123]

Originally Posted by saikee

You can boot up ubuntu which is an installable Live CD now.

Click accessory, then terminal and check activate the partitioning program "cfdisk" by

sudo cfdisk /dev/sda

I assume you have a recent Ubuntu and have only one hard disk as all disks are now called sda if it is the first one.

You can use cfdisk to delete everything and create two partitions sda1 say anything above 10Gb and sda2 say 1Gb as a swap. You need to highlight "type" to select type 82 for a swap. Highlight "write", press return and re-confirm with a "yes" and the hard disk will be suitable for Ubuntu installation on a reboot.

You do not commit until you type "yes". Without highlighting "write" and press return the existing partition table will not be touched.

You should consider salvage data in the XP partition first and mount it in Ubuntu to access its content.

ive tried and tried to salvage the xp partiton and just cant do it, ive got ubuntu on main pc and have had no probs usuing it so that why im thinking of using it on the other tower to be honest im at the stage ive had enough