WindowsXP disc won't boot

[vindane]

Hi all! I just installed FC5. I always heard it was best to install Linux first, then Windows. Well, it seems maybe Windows first would have been the wiser choice.
Anyway, when I have the WindowsXP Media Center disc (Dell Re-Install DVD-Rom) in the tray, it says "Press any key to bood from cd..." When I press a randon key, the screen goes black and nothing. It just hangs with a blank screen.

Since it worked just fine right before I installed FC5, I'm assuming that it has something to do with the way that I formatted the HD during install.

/dev/sda1 (/boot)
/dev/sda2 (/)
/dev/sda3 (swap)
Unpartitioned space (Was going to be the windows partition)

Do I need to reinstall FC5 and add /dev/sda4 (vfat) so the Windows XP CD can see it?

Thanks for any help you can offer me!

[vindane]

Well I tried two things.

First I reinstalled everything and instead of leaving the extra space unpartitioned, I changed it to "vfat". Upon reboot, I still experienced the same problem. Double-checked my bios boot sequence. "CD-ROM>HDD>any USB device".
So second, I logged into my Fedora install and started fdisk. I changed the "/dev/sda4" label from "vfat" to "(7) HPFS(?)/NTFS".

My bios or whatever still can't recognize my Windows XP disc.

How could I wipe my hard-drive completely?

I tried deleting all partitions in fdisk but it won't let me delete my / partition or the NTFS partition.

[Wicked]

This just sounds like your windows XP CD is dead... formating your hard drive isn't likely to fix your cd...

Now I don't know where you heard it's better to install linux before XP... XP doesn't like linux and when you install it it deletes grub and you won't have access to linux anymore.

So, get a working winXP cd, partition your hard drive for linux and windows, install windows, then linux.

[vindane]

I used two different XP cd's. One of them is brand new and broke the seal on the package just for this occasion. Before I installed Fedora, I put it in the cd tray and booted it up. It worked perfectly before I put Fedora on the hard-drive.

I'm very confident that it's not both of my XP cd's.

It's not so much formatting the hard-drive that sounds right to me but wiping the MBR.
Is it possible that during installation, something was written to the MBR, causing data on an XP disc not to be recognized?

[Wicked]

Oh well... fix the MBR (which will kill grub) then install WinXP, then install linux.
It should work this way.

[BoaZ2020]

Some newer Dell's namely the small form factor Optiplex's have a USB CD-ROM drive, try putting that before your HDD in the boot sequence. I'd also have to agree with Wicked in saying if you see the boot from CD message that it's not your HDD causing the problem. In any event if you're willing you can wipe the drive of all partitions with fdisk and then try again.

BoaZ2020

[vindane]

Okay I setup the boot sequence exactly the same way on my wife's identical computer and the XP disc works just fine.

I'm unsure how to access fdisk on the Fedora disk when using it as a boot disk without it taking me through the install process. So I used a copy of Slackware 10.2 and got to a prompt without installing it. Anyway, when trying to access my hdd with "fdisk /dev/sda", it says it can't read it.
I didn't realize that this new Dell computer had an SCSI hdd but this is where Fedora told me I needed to install. I tried everything with fdisk (ie: sda, sdb, sdc, hda, hdb, hdc, etc.).

Any ideas? I really appreciate everyone's brainstorming on this!

[vindane]

Okay I fixed it.

I booted up the Fedora DVD into rescue mode and was able to get to a command line w/o booting up the OS. From there, I just fdisked into my hdd and deleted all partitions.
Upon rebooting, my Windows XP disc was recognized and promptly took me into a new XP install.

This time I'll be sure to partition when I install XP, THEN install Linux. :)


Thanks all!

[BoaZ2020]

Glad you fixed it.