Installing winxp and grub

[rounder24]

I currently have a laptop running a dual boot (1 drive, seperate partitions) of win vista and ubuntu 8.04.

Having not liked vista so much I want to replace it with winXP again. Whenever I boot from the winXP disk, when it gets to the "checking system hardware screen" it goes black and halts there.

I've tried multiple copies which work on other people computers. I read somewhere that if grub is installed in the MBR the winXP disk won't boot up properly. I'm guessing that is the cause.

How can I fix this? I don't have a floppy drive because it's a new laptop but I could buy a usb one if that helps. And since it crashes at that screen I can't get to the recovery console to use the fixmbr command.

Thanks for the help in advance.

[rounder24]

bump

[logos34]

I read somewhere that if grub is installed in the MBR the winXP disk won't boot up properly. I'm guessing that is the cause.

How can I fix this? I don't have a floppy drive because it's a new laptop but I could buy a usb one if that helps. And since it crashes at that screen I can't get to the recovery console to use the fixmbr command.


I've never had a problem with xp install disc and grub.

Maybe you have a small vista recovery partition that could be blocking it somehow?

You could try using Gparted in ubuntu to wipe/delete the vista partition (and recovery if present), then run the xp install cd again and install in empty/unallocated space. Since XP will overwrite grub on the mbr, you can restore the latter using the ubuntu live cd (see link below).