mountainrider

Please help...I'm desperate!! I'm new to this forum and really hope somebody can help out. I just purchased a Compaq laptop used (EBay) with AMD 64 3200+. The laptop came with UBUNTU installed...no Windows. I was pleased because I have an interest in UBUNTU (have 7.04 disk already), but need to install a "dual boot" with Windows for software purposes. It was suggested by the seller that I simply reinstall Windows then reinstall UBUNTU. I decided to do just that using Compaq recovery disks (we have another Compaq LT)...but Windows hung on the final reboot (3rd disk) with the following message sequence: GRUB loading stage 1.5. GRUB loading, please wait... Error 17 Obviously GRUB did NOT deinstall when XP reformatted. Now it won't even read an UBUNTU 7.04 disk to reinstall. I have adjusted the boot order (setup utility seems dated actually), attempted various bootdisks, "Boot 'n Nuke" etc, but I cannot get past the above error code! Sad( Any ideas? It will not read ANY disk at boot now. There is no command line available (even tried DOS 6.22 bootdisk). Help!!! Please? Thanks! Doug

Ah...we have joy...successfully installed Win 98 (apparently more complete HDD format) and then XP and things work fine.