[ltp] t21 won't boot after aborted install

[Bradley W. Langhorst]

brian.hare@highmark.com wrote:

>
>
>It's possible you hosed the partition, which means you'll have to re-format
>in the Win2k install.  You'll lose all your data, but at least you'll get a
>useful laptop back!
>

You first two bits would be right if the partition was not already 
hosed.  He did hose the partition table
.  While I'm arguing with you... it'd be a windows laptop again and I'm 
not sure how useful that would be ;)

your best solution is to re-write the partition table exactly as you had 
it before.

If you had it as one big partition for the whole disk just use the linux 
tools (don't try to use dos FDISK) to re-write the 1st partition so that
it starts at the beginning and ends at the last sector.  If you had more 
than one partition but don't remember the exact numbers from
the fdisk screen you're screwed (unless you want to do some sector 
editing looking for an end of partition signature).
You could try just making new ones of the right sizes but you'd be 
incedibly lucky if that worked.

bottom line
it it's one partition try to recreate it using linux's fdisk
if its more than one start from scratch.  The good news in this case is 
that you don't have to have windows at all.  I recommend going cold turkey
or use kde in "windows mode" if you need some virtual methodone to get 
you off of the windows smack ;)

seriously though - if you feel you have to have windows i'd install 
linux first.  When you partition the disk leave space at the beginning 
of the disk for win2k
, it is really picky about the position of the free space. Make 
absolutely sure that you create a boot disk for linux since win2k will 
wipe out lilo during the install and you'll need the disk to get it back.

good luck

brad





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