Help!

[smolloy]

That's up to you, but it's pretty easy to get Ubuntu and XP running together as "dual-boot".

If you're willing to learn a little bit about Linux, I think you'll find you really like it (despite this horrible first experience). But, of course, it's your computer, so it's up to you.

[Jonathan183]

I think since you have got to this point you may as well see if you can get Ubuntu working ... but it's up to you. If you want to try getting the install you have working then open a terminal and

sudo -s
mkdir /manmount
mount /dev/sda1 /manmount
cat /manmount/boot/grub/menu.lst

and post the output and we can try and help sort why you could not get a grub menu.

If you decide you just want to install XP thats fine ... but you may need to wipe grub off the hard drive first - try to boot from the XP install CD and if that does not work boot using the Ubuntu CD again, open a terminal and type

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1

This will wipe the MBR of the disk so Grub and partition information will be erased ! Windows XP should then install

If you get curious in future about Linux then use the Wubi install ... this will install Ubuntu without changing partition structure of the disk.