Linux has wiped my HDD....I think

[Cup of Squirrels]

Just installed Madrake Linux. Very excited, until I realised what had happened:

It looks like Madrake has wiped my hard drive of...everything. Except it's self. I may be wrong. The files may be lurking somewhere on the PC but I cant find anything. Im not all that annoyed with the loss of some of my games but im a tad ticked off with the loss of windows. Ok, ticked off isnt the word.

Basicly, during the installation I had no options whatsoever to use partiniong the Hard Drive, so I expected it just did it itself.

I know that on boot up I have multiple-choice load up choices. but none of them seem to say "Windows". If windows was a choice, what would it be?

Please help me, I have an angry parent about to rip my head off...

[Nerderello]

use the hardware browser or the control centre to see what partitions you still have. If you have one that is marked as being Fat or fat32, then you still have a windows partition. If so, goto the tutorial section of this site and have a look at the various posts on solving boot problems.

have fun

Nerderello

[Cup of Squirrels]

Er, I'm not sure on how I discover wether or not I have the fat or fat32 partitions. I have used the hardware browser configuration tool for the Hard Disk this had a blue Windows tab. Does this mean that windows is still installed somewhere in my system? If so, how can I access it?

[Chris H]

Run diskdrake (from the mdk control centre or terminal ) and that should show you what partitions you have. Don't make any changes though

[variant]

select the entry in the boot loader that says "windows" "dos" or "garbage" that should boot to windows.

If you are planing to continue asking questions then you should really include more information.. like.. you say "I know that on boot up I have multiple-choice load up choices. but none of them seem to say "Windows". If windows was a choice, what would it be?" to get an answer to that you might list the choices that you actualy _do_ have..

[Cup of Squirrels]

Ok my choices on boot up are:
linux
263-7
2425-2
failsafe
floppy

and in diskdrake there seems to be no sign of fat32 or fat *cries*

[Chris H]

Final check would be to see if the linux partitions add up to your hd size. If so then windows is a goner.

Use KDiskfree or type df

[Anonymous]

If you were insalling the 2.6 kernel. parted xsambled the mbr but your XP is still there. I have not seen a fix for Mandrake but this is the fix for Fedora and I see no reason why it would not also work with Mandrake: http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedor.../msg02114.html
There is also a fix for Suse: http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/0...booting91.html . This site was very slow.

Counterspy