Help recover lost partitions

Help!!!

Dual boot XP Pro and Fedora. Tried upgrading Fedora and now neither will boot. Installed Mandrake on top of Fedora and now when I boot from Mandrake cd I get a black screen with an "L".

When I try to boot from XP pro cd it gives the option of recovery console but when chosen the screen goes black and then eventually system turns itself off.

Does anybody have a suggestion how I can rebuild the MBRs on these?

 

Are you using 1 or 2 HDDs?

The following instructions should take care of the Windows XP Pro.

Here you go:

1. Use the Windows XP CD-ROM to restart the computer.

2. At the Welcome to Setup screen, press R to repair the Windows XP installation.

3. Press C to repair the Windows XP installation by using the Recovery Console.

4. Type the number that corresponds to the Windows installation that you want to repair, and then press ENTER. For example, type 1, and then press ENTER.

5. Type the Administrator password, and then press ENTER.

6. Type map, and then press ENTER. Note the drive letter that is assigned to the CD-ROM drive that contains the Windows XP CD-ROM.

7. Type the following commands, pressing ENTER after you type each one, where drive is the drive letter that you typed in step 4:

fixmbr \Device\HardDisk0​

fixboot c:​

copy drive:\i386\ntldr c:\​

copy drive:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\​

If you are prompted to overwrite the file, type y, and then press ENTER.

NOTE: In these commands, there is a space between the ntldr and c:\, and between ntdetect.com and c:\.

8. Type the following command, and then press ENTER:

type c:\Boot.ini​

A list similar to the following list appears:

[boot loader] ​

timeout=30​

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS​

[operating systems] ​

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect​

If you receive the following message, the Boot.ini file may be missing or damaged:

The system cannot find the file or directory specified.​

9. If the Boot.ini file is missing or damaged, create a new one. To do so, follow these steps:

a. Use a text editor, such as Notepad or Edit.com, to create a boot loader file similar to the following boot loader file:​

[boot loader]​

timeout=30​

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS​

[operating systems]​

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect​

b. Save the file to a floppy disk as Boot.ini.​

c. Type the following command at the Recovery Console command prompt to copy the Boot.ini file from the floppy disk to the computer:​

NOTE: If you used Notepad to create the file, make sure that the .txt extension is not appended to the Boot.ini file name.​

copy a:\Boot.ini c:\​

10. Type exit, and then press ENTER. The computer restarts.

 

Greetings,

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