Well, I messed up big time (trying to reinstal XP)

I have the Aspire One with 120gb HDD, 1gb of RAM, XP key, etc. I installed ubuntu, and today tried to reinstall XP using a 2gb flashdrive and this guide :

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vt_8p0Vl ... re=related

I feel I followed it pretty well, but I definitely did mess up somewhere. Now it will boot to XP only if I select the second option, when booting from USB, for installing XP. Except instead of installing, it just loads up XP using the user name I created with PeTo. However, its limited access, I find now area to use the password I defined to get admin control, and only works if I load it up that way I described. if I try booting from HDD with no flashdrive plugged in, it says there is a harddrive error. So basically I fucked up.. any idea how to delete the partition entirely and try again ? Any help is appreciated.

 

actually, i did the EXACT same thing last night. im screwed as well. can anyone help us?????

 

I booted up to USB drive again, I think I did the GUI install.. try one of the options though, because now I have a full running XP with admin on my computer, it still doesnt boot up normally though. I need to ahve the flash drive plugged in, I boot to it and choose to "run GUI setup", and then it loads up XP (with all the stuff still installed, so its like a hidden working copy.. its kind of cool but kind of a pain in the ass, to need the USB stick to boot up)

any help for clearing the slatewould be helpful!

 

It sounds like the 'boot.ini' is messed up.

1st - Let me say that: "I make NO guarantee that this will work." But this is what I had to do to mine after I messed up the boot files on mine.

After you boot into XP remove the USB drive and then go to c:/ and check the boot.ini file. It will likely be hidden so you will have to go into folder options and set view so that you can see hidden and system files.

Open the file boot.ini in the root directory of drive C:\ with Notepad: It should look like this.

[Boot Loader]timeout=30
Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS
[Operating Systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

If it doesn't change it and save it - make sure that notepad does NOT save it as a .txt (Text) file

Reboot and see if it boots right. If not, you should still be able to boot with the Flash drive.

Again, no guarantee!!

Good Luck.

 

I love you! That absolutely did the trick =]