eurocoffee

Thanks a bunch for the insight. as it turns out, the cd was a dud.murphy's law...anywho...im now in the process of reinstalling xp. i will be installing some flavor linux soon, i was actually hoping someone might be able to suggest an os i should use...mostly for gaming/online gaming and surfing. Since i am a noob to linux, what are the compatabllilty options, say transferring files from my windows pc's on the network i have at home? currently have: ASUS L5D laptop 1G RAM, 80G 7200rpm hd, nVidia g-force 5650-GO (directX 9b), runs on AMD Athlon64 3000+(oc'd, upgraded fans and heat-sync's!! ...i've heard about my video card being "the plague" when it comes to linux drivers, but i am willing to experiment. I havent really had any real problems as far as games running on xp. fear gave me a hard time at first but runs decently. I can play games like FarCry and CS2 on medium to high options and 1400x1024 rez. Ive been using the laptop a lot, runs better than the desktop computers i have at home, havent upgraded in years. thanks guys-Euro

1&2- I play about equal amount of each. sometimes you need to put on the surround headphones and dim the lights to f.e.a.r., or pick up the ps-style controller and play san andreas. ww-2 flight simulators (s.w.o.n.) and the like are always fun. Sometimes you need to pick a side and plant/diffuse the bomb in CS2. Or go crazy in Battlefield 2. classic Zero Hour...Half-Life 2...aliens man...f'in crazy. 3- see above 4- paying is annoying. why pay monthly? what a jip. something like Steam is ok...buy once, play on their servers forever, get free mods AND you get a variety of older games to choose from from the door. what really pisses me off is noob 12year olds with admin priviledges you get for an extra 10 bucks. check this out I was playing bf2 and the guy gets outta his tank. i get in. then he sez to give it back or ill be booted. i told him where to go, and that i would take care of him should he try. sure enough he booted me. sure enough he was banned from the biggest servers within a day:-D it sure helps to have online-gaming friends! Good luck with the research. Euro

Thanks so much for the link to the rescue cd website. using that program i've converted the partition to ntfs...however, when i boot the system i still get the linux screen to choose operating system. Anything other than windows results in freeze. Now, keeping windows is not a priority. I would gladly re-install a fresh copy given the opportunity. If only i could get the damn activation screen to go away...its a legit copy of windows, just its been activated too many times. I could copy the .wpa files from my other computer...if the damn thing would run. At this point, I need the linux welcome screen to go away. That will enable autoboot from cd. right? I checked the bios setting, cd is first on startup list. default. again, thanks for your time

ok so here's the spiel-please cant someone assist? Installed Mandrakelinux 10.1 onto my laptop. was missing cd-4 so i never got around to actually use the gui. i will tho...anyways linux has to go for now. windows was installed before linux, and in the meantime i forgot to activate windows, not sure if anyone's familiar but when activation period expires the computer gets stuck on the logon screen and wont let you do anything else. no Ctrl+Alt+Del nothing. now here's the tricky part- I tried using a bootable windows 98 cd because the xp cd i have is an "upgrade cd" not a fresh installation, so it will not boot, needs to be run from within windows. computer starts and goes to the Linux choose operating system screen. no matter what I select, linux or linux nofb or failsafe or windows the bootcd will not start. my question is: can i somehow get the W98 cd to run right off the bat so that I can begin this long annoying proccess of reinstalling. or is there another way to remove linux without using windows? I would really appreciate any help anyone can give.Cheers-Euro