Ooopsy ... Um I need your help

Hi and thanks in advance

I thought I'd do my partners friend a favour and install Zorin to run side by side with XP (had major problems with xp and somehow zorin fixed the problem, internet problems) anyway I then started the process of installing it via unetbootin, all was going well I done the partition and it continued to install but then came up with an error and I was given the option to either close or cancel, I ended up clicking both after awhile (wasn't getting a response) so I forced a shut down ... I SOO WISH I DIDN'T

I think I may have partitioned the thing wrong, because xp is gone now and I can't do a system recovery on start up because after the pc had restarted, it didn't load anything ( i know ) so I've ended up having to do a full install of zorin just to get something on the screen (i really don't want anyone knowing whats happening at the moment) It was an accident ohhh man, but in geparted I can still see the umm backup recovery thing on the hard drive, I just don't know how to use it from there, or whether it's even possible, well I'm sure it is more hoping it is.

Any assistance with this will be soo greatly appreciated ... ( I can honestly say I learnt my lesson )

Thanks
Skoobyboo

Hi,

if you didn't delete the recovery partition you should be able to recover the system using the F11 key assuming that it is showing on your screen when you boot, use a partition tool to reformat your drive back to NTFS; but don't format the recovery partition, then reboot using F11 and go into recovery mode, you will have to re-install Zorin again after. the next time, take it slow with the options.

Failing that, assuming you still have the XP disk, boot using that and reinstall the Xp system first and then Zorin!!.

I am saying the F11 key but it may be another key like F10!!.

Regards Wolfman

Here is something from swarfendor437 which may assist you:

http://www.youtube.com/user/swarfendor4 ... Rimk8-UGvw

Thanks for that wolfman will give it a go ... I have about 4 hours to fix it (fingers crossed)

skoobyboo wrote:Thanks for that wolfman will give it a go ... I have about 4 hours to fix it (fingers crossed)

Keep us posted... best of luck with this issue.

Thank you both for your help, and yeah NO LUCK ... But I have managed to make a partition to reinstall xp.

Aand just when you think thats the end of it, it isn't. Having problems with Zorin now will look around to see if anyone else has had the same problems... Oo could I sneak it in here please? Well, I'll just ask (incase I can't find a solution; I do have unetbootin putting zorin onto usb right at this moment, I thought I'd reinstall it and see what happens)

It loads fine, but 2 things will either happen

1. It'll go into power saver and I can't wake it up or
2. It'll bring up a whole lot of stuff (I think it might a log of some sort, screen goes black and looks like a cmd with numbers and errors) it comes up with syncing error, kernel, fatal error stuff (I will write it down next time I turn it on) the last bit says "Panic occured Switching back to text console"

I first tried zorin (before wiping the whole drive by accident) beside xp because it was riddled with viruses, I managed to get rid of them, but the internet wouldn't work, it would say it was connected but wouldn't load pages, did the whole google thing and then I thought I'd try a linux os to see if it was a windows thing and to save his mate an expensive visit to the pc docs ( because I did the recovery (that was when the recovery bit was on the hdd) but didn't solve anything)... Well, it fixed it alright. But yeah, I'm left with the 2 above problems. And yeah he still hasn't got his pc back yet, but I did say it'll be all gtg today ... Gotta stay positive right

Damn thats not gonna work, next one ...

I agree with swarfendor437 except I do not recommend using soft partitions when hard drives are so cheap these days, on a home user's desktop PC I'd have 3 hard drives.... 1 for Windows, 1 for Linux ( / /var /etc /bin /sbin /tmp and so forth), 1 hard drive for /home. If you want to reformat/reinstall Linux, just unmount /home do the install and then remount it. If you have /home on one drive (physical drive), you can't do that at all.

For servers, and depending on the type of server, I would have /var on it's own hard drive (due to the space log files can take up), /home on it's own hard drive, and so forth.