t8ball

Blackbird 45's answer works only if you have a bios that supports LBA. However, if your system doesn't I just got something that worked well for me. Here’s the problem: Install Fedora on the same drive as Windows XP. You have no XP disks to do a recovery. Fedora has a bug that installs itself on the MBR meaning your NTFS system is inoperable. So, now you cannot boot to the XP partition. Well, after you bang your head against the wall because you didn't just read installing Fedora for 2 hours but should have looked it up to see what other difficulties others were having, I’ve got the fix for it Even after you get the blue screen of “pain in the ass” and message: [sTOP c000021a{Fatal System Error} … 0xC000003a the system has been shut down] So, here’s what I did that worked. I actually did quite a bit which had no effect but that’s neither here nor 3 hours in the past. On a file sharer such as Emule download “Ultimate Boot Disk Ghost” about 16.5 mb iso file. Obviously use the Linux OS or a secondary cpu. Boot from the CD (make sure under BIOS your priority for booting disk is before HD) then run to the C prompt. Enter “ fdisk /mbr” (NOTE- other options are “fixboot” or “bootcfg/rebuild”. Both SHOULD work but fixboot will rewrite the whole boot record not just MBR thus I think “ fdisk/mbr” is best) This will fix the MBR which Fedora writes over. Now, your Linux is inaccessible. So, you have to reboot again to the disk and go down to Partition Magic. Under partition magic you will find the NTFS file system is hidden and the Linux is Active (eg. 1st Boot). So, change the NTFS system that’s hidden which SHOULD be the original partition where your Windows XP is stored. Reboot and you will come back to the Windows OS. Linux is still installed but inactive. To make it active use THIS guide and NOT the one on the Fedora CD. The bug lies in GRUB which typically either writes over the MBR making windows inaccessible or it ends on a partition that is too far (+8.5 GB) for your BIOS to read because it doesn’t use LBA. Thanks to ED for the guide for setting up Linux/Windows correctly. Guide: http://grayareas.net/other/Knoppix/DualB...muB%20HOWTO.htm