How to reinstall XP

Factual Questions
1

I have an HP Pavilion PC with XP and Redhat installed on it.

The PC was shipped without CDs, but rather all the XP files are on an extended partition on the hard drive.

In order to reinstall XP in the past, all I needed to do was press F8 at boot up and it would take me to the XP setup screens and away I would go.

After installing Redhat, though, it runs something called GRUB which gives me the option of which OS to load. Unfortunately, I can no longer get to the XP extended partition to reinstall it.

Anyone know how to reinstall XP if you are dual booting with Linux?

Thanks.

2

Well, if no one knows how to boot up Windows into the re-install mode with an extended partition, does anyone know where to find resources to solve this kind of problem?

I’ve googled quite a bit but didn’t find anything very useful, outside of suggestions to FDISK and remove GRUB and such. I’m a little leary of using FDISK since I don’t really want to wipe out the extended partition and completely lose my XP system files.

Thanks.

3

If you have access to another computer, you can simply create a DOS boot disk. If you can’t read the partition containing XP from within DOS (because it’s too big or whatever), you should be able to burn the XP files to CD from within Linux, then use a boot disk from http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm that contains CD drivers, so that you’ll be able to access the CD from DOS.

4

I think bootdisk.com have started selling their disks. I can send you one by email if needed.

5

It sounds like you can still get into Windows XP, just via the Grub boot menu. In that case, there may be a utility in XP to create installation CDs. Actually, here is a page that describes how to recover the system from within XP, which isn’t the same thing of course, and might wipe the Linux installation depending on whether you do a normal or a destructive recovery. Also, make sure to firewall the system before actually connecting it to the internet. Ideally, you should have Windows XP SP2 downloaded separately and install it locally before you connect to the net.

Also, here is another page that describes how to create the recovery discs in XP.

6

Thank, Dewey Finn. I think that information is exactly what I was after. I’m going to give that a short tomorrow night.

Ponster and Baraqiyal - thanks for the suggestion about a boot disk, but I don’t know if that would help in the case. I don’t know if the boot disk would give me the option to boot from the extended partition or not.

I’ve also considered modifying GRUB to boot from the extended partition. Does anyone know if that would work? I’m not sure if the partition with the XP system files on it is bootable or not. I assume hitting F10 (or F8 or whatever it is) would simply boot from that partition, but I really don’t know.