hc4zrr324 Posted December 31, 2007 Share Posted December 31, 2007 Greets all! I have a Dell Precision M90 that came with windows xp pro sp2. Recently I caught wind of the possibility of dual booting windows xp with leopard on my laptop. So yesterday I got Partition Magic 8, set aside 20GB of unallocated space for leopard. Put in the ToH RC2 Intel Leopard DVD, restarted, booted from the DVD, and installed leopard. Everything was going swimmingly until i rebooted to find that once my computer got past the BIOS, it couldn't load any opperating system. Neither XP or Leopard. Instead of seeing a windows logo or a partially eaten macintosh apple, i got a blank screen with four terrifying words "error loading opperating system." I haven't been able to use my computer since. I've been on the phone with both Dell and Microsoft today. Both couldn't help me at all. I tried using the recovery console that comes with the windows xp installation disc to reset the master boot record and run a disk check. Neither of which helped. Ideally what i would like is to be able to boot back into windows (the windows partition being unharmed) so i can delete the leopard partition and just rock the single boot of xp, or something to that effect. I am at a complete loss for solutions. You folks are my last hope. Please help me get my computer back!! Thanks! -Zach Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hc4zrr324 Posted January 1, 2008 Author Share Posted January 1, 2008 Please Please help me! am I not being specific enough? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yoasif Posted January 1, 2008 Share Posted January 1, 2008 Use a Windows install or boot disk and use the fixmbr utility. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarioJE Posted January 1, 2008 Share Posted January 1, 2008 Check if Windows' partition is set to active. You can only have one active partition in a hard disk, and this active partition is where the BIOS will look for a bootable code. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hc4zrr324 Posted January 1, 2008 Author Share Posted January 1, 2008 Interesting. How would I set the windows partition to active? Is it subjective to the BIOS version? or is there a universal method? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adr0b Posted January 1, 2008 Share Posted January 1, 2008 Hey hey! I've had this problem a few times, Ive still got a bald patch on my head to prove. Look for a boot CD with partitioning tools, I swear by Hiren's Boot disk, I think it only works on IDE optical drives tho -I had to steal one out an old rig. You can select Partition Tools, and through one of them you can set a partition as active by right clicking on the windows partition and 'set as active', easiest is Acronis with 'manual mode' selected at start. luck has been wished for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
st40611 Posted January 1, 2008 Share Posted January 1, 2008 I believe you can use the Ubuntu LiveCD to set it to active. If worst comes to worst, you can probably reformat the whole drive and then reinstall XP, and the try reinstalling Leopard again. But again, I think the problem is just the active drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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