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    Gateway 4542GP

    Discussion in 'Gateway and eMachines' started by penkid, Dec 16, 2010.

  1. penkid

    penkid Newbie

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    Cannot get this machine to boot into Windows.
    Have not used it in more than a year and pulled it out thinking I would do the updates and use it at my work.
    It was dual booted with XP Pro and Debian Lenny.
    Fired it up and GRUB loader appeared, then selected to boot XP.
    Got the XP splash screen but it wouldn't go any further.
    Turned it off and this time chose Debian and it booted fine.
    Pulled out recovery disk I made when I first got it.
    Did a re-start and got the recovery console.
    First chose a non-destructive restore, then did a re-start and still no success.
    Then did the destructive restore which evidently wiped out the GRUB.
    Tried using the disk to enter safe mode with command prompt but that wouldn't work either.
    Next downloaded the XP setup disks file from Microsoft How to obtain Windows XP Setup disks for a floppy boot installation
    No floppy on the machine so I burned that to a cd, did a re-start with the disc in the tray.
    Machine fired up with a Caldera 7 dos box. Changed from A to C drive and tried a scandsk command but that didn't work. Then tried FIXMBR to no avail. So tried FDSK and it showed the disk structure with the NTFS partition and the three ext2 partitions.
    I realize that the simplest thing would be to run GParted, reformat the whole thing and do a Netinstall of Debian.
    Really want to get the XP Pro working instead because could never get sound to work in Linux.
    AHA now the questions.
    Is there anyway to get XP started from the DOS interface?
    Tried the FDISK MBR command but the option is to rewrite the boot sector with a DR-DOS boot sector which won't get me booted into XP.
    Next question. Are XP reinstallation disks machine specific? Have an XP home reinstall disk for an EMachines desktop. Could I start up with that and use the repair option to get going again?
    As the laptop is more than 3 years old Gateway no longer supports it and I can't order a new reinstall disk from them
    Help!!!Any suggestions would truly be appreciated.
    Sorry this has been such a long post but tried to give enough info for the reader to understand the situation.

    Jim
     
    penkid, Dec 16, 2010
    #1